I heard about this the other day.... It's probably unlikely to affect very many of my packages, but I can see it being a major PITA for sellers who only (or primarily) send parcels.
eg What happens if the buyer refuses to pay the hold fee, does the package get RTS and the seller hit up for it? ๐ฎ (As well as return postage, since AP seem to be charging that on RTS parcels these days, too).
I get trying to encourage more buyers to collect ASAP, because post offices aren't a Tardis n' all that, but it bugs me that AP's solution to everything lately is either charge more for it, or start charging for it. 
@digital*ghost wrote:I heard about this the other day.... It's probably unlikely to affect very many of my packages, but I can see it being a major PITA for sellers who only (or primarily) send parcels.
eg What happens if the buyer refuses to pay the hold fee, does the package get RTS and the seller hit up for it? ๐ฎ (As well as return postage, since AP seem to be charging that on RTS parcels these days, too).
I get trying to encourage more buyers to collect ASAP, because post offices aren't a Tardis n' all that, but it bugs me that AP's solution to everything lately is either charge more for it, or start charging for it.
Unfortunately the only way you can get a message across to some people is to hit them where it hurts most, which is the hip pocket. I'm not criticising you for what you said, I'm just not sure there is any other way for them to get people to pick things up sooner. With so many more parcels being sent these days than there were 15 or 20 years ago, post offices just don't have the space to store things. If they hire out extra space just to store things awaiting collection, that's going to cost someone somewhere - either those who don't collect, or postage will go up even more.
If people want to buy online they can't blame someone else if they find it awkward to get to the PO to collect things within a week. If you can't collect it, don't buy - simple. I think 5 days is quite reasonable for them to hold things. If people are going away they could surely ask someone else to collect their mail, or not buy online before they go. If they really find it hard to get to the PO to collect things, have them sent to a friend or the next door neighbour, or to work. At one stage I had a heap of things sent to a friend who lived 2 hours away and I just collected them next time I visited. She used to enjoy opening my parcels to check them for me. That's extreme but surely people can find someone who'll either collect things for them or who'll be home when the delivery man calls.
Our PO is a reasonable size in the customer area but their space out the back is extremely limited, yet some people leave large boxes sitting there for weeks before they bother to pick them up. It's a small town where everyone knows the postmaster and his wife because we all pick up our mail from the PO (no street delivery) and I think a lot of people take advantage of that and are very casual about picking things up. They just don't stop to think that maybe their parcel isn't the only one taking up valuable space - and I'm not talking about people who can't get there in working hours! They know their parcels are there but they do nothing about it.
Some of the stuff that sits there for ages is for people out of town who do get their mail delivered but the boxes are too big to fit in their letterboxes. It's not the postie's job to drive up to the house (often a fair distance from the road) to drop boxes off. These people may have to make a special trip into town to pick them up but they must know that when they buy the stuff, and they just think the post office can babysit it forever at their convenience. A lot of them would come to town for other things but they just can't be bothered going a little bit out of their way to pick up their parcels while they're here.
I see many people complaining here because their 'pick up only' items aren't picked up within a week, so why should the PO be expected to hold things any longer than that?
