When I order something online and pay for delivery, I do expect it to be delivered to my address. Twice in the last three months I have checked my mailbox only to find a card telling me that “we missed you” and informing me that I have seven days to go and pick it up from the local Post Office. I paid good money for delivery of both items, but then had to go and collect it? When I brought this up with the local post office, I was given the “we have no control over the couriers” standard reply. It does seem that Australia Post is charging like wounded bulls for an appalling service - and they don’t care. Twice already this year I have sent letters of complaint to the appropriate people, and they didn’t even show the normal courtesy of acknowledging receipt of the complaints, never mind actually addressing the problem. Or maybe my letters haven’t reached them yet.
Parcel delivery problems
Everything is going as planned.
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Asset-strip a publicly-owned organisation until it’s unable to provide a viable service;
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Force it to become a profit-making venture rather than a public service;
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When it fails (see 1) use it as a demonstration that private enterprise is always more efficient than a public service;
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Sell it;
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Profit (i.e. large “donations” to party coffers).
It is another example of the government side stepping their duty by making a semi autonomous business. I purchased a book from overseas and it was delivered to tassie in 3 days. A birthday card from the Gold Coast takes 8 days and we pay extra for that service. What a joke.
Further to undelivered services: my neighbours were very surprised yesterday that I had been collecting their mail while they were overseas, because they had arranged for mail to be forwarded to their son. A service paid for but not delivered!
Had another delivery today which had an excessively distant delivery date estimate via online tracking to make the actual pathetic delivery time seem not so bad.
It began its journey in Underwood QLD last Wednesday, then arrived in Sunshine West VIC on the Friday, where it sat for the weekend and an extra day before finally being sent to Tassie on the following Tuesday, being today. The ETA according to Australia Post’s online track service wasn’t until the following Thursday. So what a miracle service they provide getting the package here two days earlier than the estimate, even though it would have previously gone from QLD to VIC overnight and then arrived in Tassie after another over-nighter.
I have another parcel that’s being monitored via Australia Post online tracking now. It began its journey yesterday (Monday) in Chullora NSW and the ETA for this one is not until Monday next week. As usual, the places I made my purchases from did not give the option to pay the extra for the faster delivery service, so I’m at the mercy of Australia Posts slow it down service
I’ve heard that comment before, that email has taken business away from Australia Post, but what of online shopping? Millions of people are now buying online and those items are being delivered by Australia Post. They have now even got their own fleet of epost delivery vans. I have a micro home business and I spend just under $1000 per month at the PO. Double that leading up to Christmas. Imagine the cash Australia Post is taking over the counter every day if a micro business like mine spends this much?
I’d like to use one of the new courier services, but they do not deliver all areas yet.
I don’t think the two systems - parcel delivery and envelope (mail) are necessarily connected though - the mail system (I think) was very very profitable, but now with volumes falling there is less profit.
Parcel delivery is much more competitive so inherently less profitable. I believe this is the root cause of their problem.
My Real Estate posted us a letter 2 weeks ago from Springfield Central to Springfield Lakes a distance of about 3 kms and same postcode. We still haven’t received the letter which isn’t urgent, just a nice certificate for renters of the month, but why oh why so long to get here. Mind you I had a previous experience of a letter taking over 2 months from a suburb about 6 kms away.
This Australia Post calls “service”! 
We have had a run of very satisfactory Aus Post parcel deliveries lately.
However there was one issue where a parcel was sent via Star Track, and when I checked the tracking number on the designated day it said Delivered. But it hadn’t arrived - it came the next day, delivered by Aus Post! So Star Track was only responsible for delivery to a central sorting office, not to my home. This information should have come from the sender.
After watching the checkout the other night on ABC iview I also discovered that Australia post uses it’s redirect service to sell our addresses to other companies without us really knowing (I’m sure it’s in tiny writing somewhere on the form or online form) and there is no way to opt out. The only way to opt out is to write to write to each company individually and tell them you don’t want to receive their mail anymore. Thanks Australia post, so much for confidentiality laws! Although the Australian government doesn’t seem to care much about these much at all anyway these days!
By my reading, that transgresses their own privacy policy -
We do not share your personal information with other organisations unless:
you give us consent, or
where sharing is otherwise required or permitted by law, or
where this is necessary on a temporary basis to enable our contractors to perform specific functions.
Not so much a problem with deliveries, but with the Startrack/Auspost tracking system. Today I recieved 2 “Good news, your shipment has been delivered” emails. I’d picked up both of these parcels from the nearest PO (25km away) about 5 weeks ago!
I am usually fairly positive about Aus. Post and try not to give negative feedback ,however, things might change.
A parcel i purchased was received by Australia post @ 5.33pm Tues. 13 Jun and Processed 7.17am Tues. 20th. Jun.
Got my items late for delivery one time. Not sure why. Some of the issues above are pretty serious.
- Some mail can’t be redirected overseas, including Registered Post, Cash on Delivery, Parcel Post and Express Post items, and items which require customs documentation. Applications to redirect mail overseas must be submitted in a Post Office (forms are available in store).
Can I have mail redirected to or from an international address?
You can apply to have your mail redirected from an Australian address to an address overseas in any Post Office. However, please note that some mail can’t be redirected overseas, including Registered Post, Cash on Delivery, Parcel Post, Express Post and items which require customs documentation.
We are not able to redirect mail from an overseas address to an Australian address. Please refer to the local postal service in the country you would like your mail redirected from.
When Australia Post first announced that they’d be doing a new tiered level of parcel delivery based on what you were prepared to pay vs how long you were willing to wait for the thing to actually be delivered, the regular post parcels suddenly became stuck at various mail sorting centres for days on end as is revealed when you have access to the online tracking service for a parcel. I’ve actually never been offered faster post options when purchasing online apart from using a courier, but anything that gets sent via Australia Post’s own Star Trak courier service usually arrives within the timeframe that the regular post used to arrive in, ie, a couple of days instead of a week or more which is the new norm for the regular post service, and the change literally happened overnight once the tiered system had been announced and was put in place. I think it’s a bit of a disservice to blatantly hold onto mail for a few extra days at the mail sorting centres just to ensure that the regular post now goes so slow you might consider actually paying the higher cost for their courier service instead. It’s a bit like the old Charlie Chaplin flick where he’s a window repairman and hires a kid to throw rocks through windows in order to generate extra business. In this case instead of having a kid throw rocks, they’re telling their sorters to hold on to the cheaper parcels, some times for a week or more, before they decide to finally put it through the system and send it on to the next major sorting hub. In our case, living in Tasmania, the mail usually goes from where ever it’s been sent on the mainland then goes to a mail sorting centre in Victoria, where it will live in limbo for the next 4 or 5 days before it finally makes the trek across the Bass Strait. As mentioned previously, before the new tiered levels were incorporated, the mail would rarely stay at the sorting centre in Victoria for more than a day. The mail’s not slow because it takes that long to get here. The mail’s slow because Australia Post puts it on hold to give their courier system a reason to cost more.
My conspiracy theory hat on - in some cases the service was historically very very slow but you could get more detail of the ‘in between’ hops a parcel took. What seems to have happened is they have slowed it all down to the worst case so now everything is very very slow, and intentionally limited the detailed view of each hop back to a rough overview, so what the customer sees is a filtered view of the parcels actual journey - at each end there seems to be a hop or two exposed, but the parcel can travel the length and bredth of the country in the meantime with no intermediate scans revealed to the customer resulting in nebulousness and plausible denial by Australia Post.
I doubt very much that private customer mail/parcels are a significant part of their business these days, so maybe we just aren’t getting the message that they don’t want our business … we small customers are just a painful anachronistic inconvenience and reminder of a bygone era when customer service mattered …
I have a conspiracy theory too . I think because the new Auspost boss is only getting paid $1.6 million a year instead of the $4.6 million her predecessor was paid , she is finding it hard to make ends meet financially and therefore is letting things slip on the job . It must be such a struggle for her .
Yesterday Auspost tracking showed my parcel was delivered, but it was not delivered to me. I rang and they took the details. This morning the Auspost eparcel driver knocked to apologise; the parcel was signed for at the same house number on a nearby street. A real oops moment since this driver regularly delivers to my house.
It seems Auspost are running GPS tracking so scanned parcels can be traced on the delivery routes. They were able to pinpoint exactly where the parcel was wrongly delivered to. I also got an apology email from a gent who I presume is the local supervisor.
They have also been far more prompt at delivering in recent times, and tracking shows mail and parcels may no longer be held captive at Sunshine West.
Could be that Auspost has been raising their game.
With all the bad press they get I am happy to provide some good press for them.
I’d empathaise with the delivery contractors in our area of large residential acreage blocks mixed in around farming. All the farms have open drives or gates. Most of the residential have closed gates.
It’s not clear for many what the closed gate is meant for. I’m accustomed to gate closed to either keep the cattle in or neighbours cattle out. Some here seem to use a closed gate to keep the dogs in. Others seem to think it is no one home or don’t come in we’re busy.
Typically most residential blocks have no people gates. One has a sign and asks you to phone a mobile if you want to come in. The greatest risk is the Kelpie bringing you a ball to play with? Several others have locking remote electric gates, no signs, no intercom, no other way in.
I try to remember to have our gate open if there is a delivery due, and to be near to the front entry. And we are only 20m from the letter box anyway. It was working, but we now have a new driver to adjust.
It’s easy to understand how the AP delivery van staff are being retrained to beep and run if every other delivery becomes hard, why bother. And if now they are on GPS, time and motion tracking might also play a factor. Just how long does the boss allow for each delivery?