Having a Rant because.. It's a Little Bit Late.

[Mary Anne]

(1) Ordered a gift for myself on Tuesday 19th March from Sydney.
Tracking stated it was in Transit on the 20th March and will arrive on Friday 23 March..

It never came and after waiting those extra 3 days that Aust Post reckon 99% of parcel arrive I rang them.
We will see what we can do to track it. The lovely Gentleman I spoke to said or you will have to make a claim if it cannot be found.
He also said they would email me when they found out what happened to it.. I reckon they forgot

The Easter Holidays must have slowed them down a lot as it finally arrived Thursday afternoon 5 April, glad it was not urgent





(2) Ordered some Vegetable Seeds over the Easter Holidays from Melbourne, posted Tuesday still Waiting.

(3) Hubby Tony received a letter from his School mate in Wales UK yesterday 2 pages of news and a small Card for the Birthday Girl.
Can understand Customs slicing one end open on the envelope to look for Drugs or other things.
They often do that to Tony's OS Mail though they usually stick the end down again with a Customs sticker on it, not this time.
Result one mangled Birthday Card... Not bad for one week I suppose.

So what Happens to your Mail..

[Floribunda]

I so sympathise with you MA - when it comes to frustrating Aust Post are right up there!
I cannot understand how they cannot do better, for when I order on the Internet and it is a courier service it can arrive in two days.
We have had so many arguments with them about “stuffing” things in our letterbox that obviously cannot fit resulting in damage.
I just try to avoid using them these days.

[Mary Anne]

I so sympathise with you MA - when it comes to frustrating Aust Post are right up there!
I cannot understand how they cannot do better, for when I order on the Internet and it is a courier service it can arrive in two days.
We have had so many arguments with them about “stuffing” things in our letterbox that obviously cannot fit resulting in damage.
I just try to avoid using them these days.

Thanks Lyn they are going backwards.
I can get parcels from the USA faster even when they are stuck in Sydney for a few days before coming on to Brisbane.
Many years ago I bought my Canon 40D from Sydney one afternoon, and the next morning a Guy was knocking on the front door at 9.30am
The best Service Lately was a a Watch I bought Tony from Singapore 30 hours from payment to our front door, easy to see these parcels did not come by Aust Post.

[ameerat42]

M A. Don't bother looking for a reason why the mail is late. Instead, pick from one of the following
unlikely reasons and stick with that...

- alien abduction of the mail van
- a dog raced off with the postie's mailbag
- the same ate the mail - even shared it with the postie
- the drone sent to deliver it crashed
...
- lots of others of the ilk
...
- and finally, when ALL other explanations fail, no matter how unlikely it may be,
the mail arrives on/before time

Other than that, I've had a few run-ins with the posties NOT putting the mail fully
inside our locking letter box. Several letters of complaint - one soon after a local
campaign to have locking letter boxes - elicited only sombre dissertations of apology
and promises that it would not happen again. (Of course, that meant after the last
time it would ever happen.)

[Mary Anne]

I reckon it would be The Drone sent to deliver it crashed

[Tannin]

Delivery seems to be completely random.

Early last month, I ordered a custom-made gimbal head from England on a Saturday afternoon UK time.
It was manufactured on the Sunday.
Shipped on the Monday using the economy service with a quoted delivery time of 30 days.
Arrived here in Ballarat on the Friday! That's 26 days early.

Seems as though I stole a bit of your luck, MA. Sorry about that.

(The really silly thing is that there was no hurry at all for this item. I don't even expect to need to use it for the first time until May!)

(And the other really silly thing is that things which ought to arrive promptly often don't.)

(And the other other really silly downright stupid thing is the insane new working regulations for Australia Post. If I walk down to the corner and post a letter to myself, it is collected, taken to the Ballarat Mail Centre, loaded onto a truck, taken 100 kilometres through the worst traffic in the second-biggest city in Australia to the other side of Melbourne (!), sorted, loaded back on to a truck and taken 100 kilometres back through the traffic to the Ballarat Mail Centre, and finally, typically about 5 days later, delivered to me. And for dreaming up this naked insanity, the head boy was pulling in $32 million a year!)

[bobt]

I'm not as hard on AP as some. They have huge amounts of mail to deliver, and I find that it's sometimes the fault of the supplier rather than AP. I've had packages delivered from O/S which have arrived in a week, and some that take over a month!

If it arrives within a reasonable time I'm usually OK with it. However, when you operate such a huge business, the law of averages mean that some of their employees are pretty average.

Arriving damaged is another issue, and sometimes that is a result of poor packaging. Generally I've had these issues sorted OK. Once I discovered that the postie, who didn't like my post box flap, ripped it off and threw it away further down the street! They ended up paying me for a new one!!

[Mary Anne]

I don't have any problems with Overseas Mail Tony, it's Australia Post that is the problem.
What a stupid idea, hopefully that new Head Girl will turn things around or at least back to the way they used to be.

[tandeejay]

Nothing we have ordered from eBay since the beginning of the year has been delivered. These were craft supplies from multiple different eBay vendors all with excellent feedback rating. Fortunately we've been able to get full refunds on everything.

[Glenda]

I must say we've had very few problems with Australia Post, but we do have a post office box which may help. For this reason it always annoys me when I order something from a supplier who won't deliver to a PO box. But, like Tony, any mail posted to another Gladstone address is first transported to the Rockhampton mail centre approx 110 kms north where it is sorted and then transported back to Gladstone, which seems a ridiculously inefficient system.

Now the Transport Dept is another matter. A few years ago I went in to renew my driver's licence mid December. On the same day I ordered a lens from EGlobal so coming from Hong Kong. My lens arrived 2 weeks before my licence. This year I again renewed my licence and this time did it totally on line - my new licence didn't arrive until the second week of January. I know it is the Christmas period but with everything computerised, surely it should be speedier than this.

[Dan05]

Recently sent a flash drive to a customer. They lost it. Re sent the flash drive, the envelope got there with a nice little hole that the flash drive fell out of. Well at least he got the envelope.


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[ricktas]

Couple of years back now, I was looking for a dvd.. that had not been released in Aus at the time. Friends in L.A said they could get it for me and post it to me. So they did. It took 23 hours from the time they posted it, till I had it. On the same day, I ordered some camera related stuff from Melbourne. Was posted via 'Express' post.. it arrived 2 days later....56 hours to be exact.

Whilst I get the argument that Australia Post have huge volumes of stuff the deliver, but that is what they do, that is their core reason for existing. As the biggest courier company in the country, you think they would have the logistics in place to deal with actually delivering stuff.

[Dan05]

Couple of years back now, I was looking for a dvd.. that had not been released in Aus at the time. Friends in L.A said they could get it for me and post it to me. So they did. It took 23 hours from the time they posted it, till I had it. On the same day, I ordered some camera related stuff from Melbourne. Was posted via 'Express' post.. it arrived 2 days later....56 hours to be exact.

Whilst I get the argument that Australia Post have huge volumes of stuff the deliver, but that is what they do, that is their core reason for existing. As the biggest courier company in the country, you think they would have the logistics in place to deal with actually delivering stuff.

Here here


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[Mark L]

So have purchased some stuff from AP members via Aust Post. All good and fast.
Have purchased many bulk seedlings for hopeful hedges via Aust post and courier. They both offer the same delivery time.
I have no problem with Aust. Post for package delivery. Tracking the delivery sucks with who ever you post with though IMHO

[Mary Anne]

So have purchased some stuff from AP members via Aust Post. All good and fast.
Have purchased many bulk seedlings for hopeful hedges via Aust post and courier. They both offer the same delivery time.
I have no problem with Aust. Post for package delivery. Tracking the delivery sucks with who ever you post with though IMHO

Mark I dont have any problems with the tracking with Aust Post, or DHL who seem to deliver all my OS Parcels, that is easy enough to understand.

My complaint is about Parcel and Mail delivery with Aust Post from one Capital City to another Capital City and damaged Mail.
My veggie seeds did not come today, so far a week from Melbourne to Brisbane is not good enough.
They are always posted in an business sized envelope, and no bulk at all as they are all tiny seeds.

[landyvlad]

Recently sent a flash drive to a customer. They lost it. Re sent the flash drive, the envelope got there with a nice little hole that the flash drive fell out of. Well at least he got the envelope.

Yes... "fell" out...


A while back I ordered two rifle scopes on the same day. One from a shop in Sydney, the other from a tin pot town in the USA. I'm in Brisbane.

Postmarks etc indicated they were indeed posted that day (which rules out drop shipping as an excuse).
It took 3 days for the one from the USA to reach my door, and nearly three weeks for the one from Sydney to arrive.

Another time I sent a 'secret santa' gift to a mate on Groote Eylandt. I knew it would take a while so I sent it a month before Christmas. He did eventually get it. In May the following year , after it had evidently done a few laps around the country.

[jim]

Speaking of damaged mail, many years ago I tried to send my brother a record as a Christmas Present. Packed into a large envelope with "Fragile" stickers all over it, it arrived neatly folded in half.

[Geoff79]

Seems to be quite a variety of experiences here. Another variation;


I used to buy, trade and sell CDs very regularly. As in, up to a dozen parcels a week at my peak. For many years it was all pretty smooth sailing but a few years ago (I’d guess around 5 or 6) the prices all got boosted up by a ridiculous percentage, and basically completely wiped out the ability to do this anymore. Trading just wasn’t worth it. About the same time prices got crazy, the service got far worse. Much slower.

It used to only take one day to post stuff within Australia and one week max from more or less any international destination I can think of.

These days it seems to take close to a week to get something within Australia and maybe if lucky, two weeks but often closer to a month for international deliveries. Maybe that’s just me dealing with dodgy providers, though, by the sounds of other experiences.

Bonus is, at least we get to pay a lot more for a far worse service!

Main thing is consistency. It used to be very, very consistent. It’s definitely not anymore.


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[Geoff Port]

Interesting thread. I order a lot of product from Australian stores mainly due to my location. Two days delivery is the norm and quite often if I order from Melbourne in the morning it arrives next day. That said I did order a signed edition of a book from the USA last year around June and it arrived in early January this year. But that was not Aust Posts error.


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[Mary Anne]

Speaking of damaged mail, many years ago I tried to send my brother a record as a Christmas Present. Packed into a large envelope with "Fragile" stickers all over it, it arrived neatly folded in half.

I am surprised it was neatly folded in half Jim.
If you popped it into an envelope I would have expected it to be smashed.