Heavy parcels - Australia Post/Peters of Kensington

My daughter recently ordered some household goods from Peters of Kensington, who packed them into a single box weighing 18 kg. She was at work when the courier delivered and the parcel was taken to the local post office. She cannot lift 18 kg and the post office staff are not allowed to leave the premises to help her take it down to the street in the lift. There is no-one living near her whom she knows who can help her carry such a large parcel. Peters of Kensington are completely unsympathetic and have told her that they can pack up to 20 kg in a box. Apparently her only option is to wait for Australia Post to return the box to PoK and then pay again for redelivery. Has anyone else had this issue?

The Auspost office may have a staff member able to take the package to a car once they have closed up for the day. Worth asking.

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Would ozpost have a hand truck they could lend, or could you borrow one elsewhere? This assumes your daughter can lift it off the truck into the car.

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Another option would be to take a second box to the PO and open the parcel where AP staff were able to place it. This would enable the contents to be divided between two boxes of approx 9kg each.

Some AP staff may be more obliging than others. Is the source of the problem Peters of K? For an online order should the retailer and customer both ensure the package requirements and weights/customer requirements are considered at the time of ordering? Perhaps this was overlooked, or is it missing from the process?

For those of us less capable at lifting and carrying (what ever the reason), do we also need to think ahead to ensure we have a solution for when items are heavy than we can safety handle. Heavier items at our local PO are unloaded by the van driver onto floor level storage. Depending on who is at the counter, I’d doubt they could manage 18kg without assistance or a suitable trolley.

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Good thinking. A much simpler solution that hardly requires any other bits to fall into place to work.

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And if the parcel had been left at the front door and one can’t pick up 18kg, the parcel would have needed to be broken down into smaller parts to get it inside the residence. Doing the same at the PO shouldn’t be an issue.

We have struck a couple of businesses like Australia Post which won’t render assistance when placing items in vehicles. On the other extreme we have also struck a local agribusiness who won’t let customers load cars.

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If Austpost staff are unable to help and the PO is near a supermarket or similar, borrow a shopping trolley. Assuming your daughter has access to a car, she can load indidual items from the box to the car.

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Thanks to everyone who replied - she used the shopping trolley/extra box suggestions this morning and unpacked the big box at the post office. Australia Post really helpful - providing scissors and space, and then taking away the big box for recycling.

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Someone recently asked me to send them a parcel, so I had to find out the maxima parameters for domestic parcels Australia Post will permit in a package:
Weight: 22kg
Length: 105cm2
Maximum dimensions: 0.25 cubic metres (Height x length x width x 250 = cubic weight).

So Peters of Kensington were being a bit conservative with the 20kg limit in regards to AP.

While lifting capability varies with individuals, WorkSafe Australia recommends no more than 16kg in a working posture.

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