Overseas parcel rate INCREASES

[creativecharm]

Just letting you all know so you can adjust overseas postage rates on your listings before next sale comes through.

I have just been to the Post Office with thin envelope containing a charm 44 grams total. Last week it would have gone at letter rate of $3.25. If going as a Parcel would have been about $8.00.

This morning rates are up. This item is now costing $20.50 to send. You can no longer send anything at "letter" rate overseas if there is an object in it. However even the "parcel" rate has more then doubled in price.

I am sending this one at my expense. It was a $10 item, with $5 postage.

I wonder how many Australian businesses sending overseas will go out of business. It's hard enough competing with Chinese sellers who sell for $1.00 including postage, without this mammoth increase in price

[chameleon54]

---

@curraone wrote:

Australia Post Hi Starry

Thank for your comments, this has helped us to understand just how significant the impact of a change in our letter definition for International has been to some small businesses. Based on your feedback we have made the decision that in line with our domestic letters policy if your article weighs less than 500g, is no more than 260mm x 360mm and is less than 20mm thick then it can be sent as an International letter.

We want to provide the means to support and encourage all Australian companies – including our small business customers – to grow their businesses overseas, and will do this by keeping our pricing as competitive as possible, while ensuring our customers have access to products and services that offer value for money.

We will be communicating with our Post Offices today to confirm the guidelines for International letters as above.

Kind Regards

---

OK here's one for the conspiritor theorists.......... What if this was the plan all along. Think red herrings, look over there, theres a spider      ( don't look here LOL  ).  Its one of the oldest tricks in the book. Governments use it all of the time when they want to raise taxes or bring down a harsh budget.

They make it sound REALLY, REALLY, REALLY  BAD, leak some horrible possibilities to the media and then back track on the extreme excesses at the last minute, claiming they listened to their constitutes.. Oh well that's not so bad after all...... Whew we all say !!! ...........Meanwhile the 50% to 100% price rises on international parcels gets through without a wimper. 

Call me suspicious, but it was all just too much of a coincidence for my liking. AP would never back down on their letter policy changes if that is what they really wanted...... We've been had      

[davidc4430]

that exact thought was in my mind, its an old political trick to leak an outragious increase in a charge/tax then when they actually put the real new rise out its much lower and we all go phew! not so bad i can live with that.

i'm fully expecting APs international price increase policy 1.2 to appear soon.

[gtautospares]

Has no one else noticed eBay has the pricing wrong???

So seems eBay couldn't integrate the new international rates properly:

AusPost Express Courier International is not available for pricing on eBay at correct rate.

AusPost Express Courier International - Shows pricing AusPost Express Post International Parcel
AusPost Express Post International Parcel - Shows pricing for Standard
AusPost Air Mail Parcel - Shows pricing for Economy

So when a customer selects AusPost Express Post International Parcel you need to send it standard to have the same rates set on eBay.

[digital*ghost]

---

@chameleon54 wrote:

---

OK here's one for the conspiritor theorists.......... What if this was the plan all along. Think red herrings, look over there, theres a spider      ( don't look here LOL  ).  Its one of the oldest tricks in the book. Governments use it all of the time when they want to raise taxes or bring down a harsh budget.

They make it sound REALLY, REALLY, REALLY  BAD, leak some horrible possibilities to the media and then back track on the extreme excesses at the last minute, claiming they listened to their constitutes.. Oh well that's not so bad after all...... Whew we all say !!! ...........Meanwhile the 50% to 100% price rises on international parcels gets through without a wimper. 

Call me suspicious, but it was all just too much of a coincidence for my liking. AP would never back down on their letter policy changes if that is what they really wanted...... We've been had      

---

AP are not averse to red herrings / diversionary tactics, misleading by omission.... They did it with the $9 fee they imposed on US bound parcels over 500g, as one example.

-But- what were they diverting our attention from with this? I mean, normal parcel prices have gone up around 10% near as I can figure - when postage prices are pretty high, a 10% increase does hurt, but it's a pretty average (i.e. expected) increase from them, and they do similar at least once a year to many (i.e. nearly all) of their postal services, all without the use of such tactics.... and as mentioned above, express international has come down by a significant percentage in some cases (I paid $56.05 for a 500g parcel to the US not so long ago, if I sent it today it would cost $42 - that's a reduction of over 20% ) . 

Plus, this came as an unannounced surprise on the day it was implemented -  they were very tight-lipped about pricing, but most of them had been revealed to everyone by the Friday beforehand, so there was plenty of time for people to be paying attention to whatever the 24 Hour International Letter Crisis of 2016 was supposed to be distracting us from. 

If this was a diversionary tactic, AP need to get a new tactics specialist. 

Re: eBay's calculated postage not matching the new prices - you can blame Australia Post for that, too. They apparently did not advise eBay unti just before the change, leaving eBay with very little time to make changes to their system (because it's not just price changes, there's service changes, making it more difficult to update their systems). 

[lupercal]

The 'ambit-claim-in-reverse' tactic did occur to me - but if that's what they were up to, they flew in the face of another famous political maxim: don't release bad news on Mondays.

[lupercal]

"Has no one else noticed eBay has the pricing wrong???"

Actually, I hadn't checked, because I pretty much assumed that would happen.  If coal face Australia Post employees don't  understand the new system, it's a fair bet Ebay won't.

[maximumdaddy-o]

If you're not happy to AP's excessive parcel rate price hikes, complain to the postal ombudsman.

Here's my letter to the postal ombudsman. Feel free to cut and paste and retool to your hearts content.

Hi there,

I’d like to complain about the recent increases to Australia Post international parcel postage rates. The price hikes on standard Airmail parcels are more than 50% higher than previously.

They have introduced a new, slower airmail service, Economy Air, that is just a little little more than the old airmail rate, but the delivery times on their website is incorrect. They are claiming 6 days, but according to my post office manager, it will actually be 10-14 days.

These changes present grave dangers to the thousands of small and home businesses exporting parcels overseas. Ebay and etsy sellers, and there are thousands of them in Australia, many of them are stay-at-home parents like myself who have started home businesses to survive, will be absolutely slaughtered by the increases. Sure there is always the choice to use the economy service, but foreign customers start to get very annoyed when items take more than a couple of weeks to arrive.

Ever since AP changed the letter rates a month or two back, there service has become an utter shambles with int’l packages that used to take 7-10 days now taking 3-5 weeks. AP used to be very fast and reliable, but I’ve had more packages, both incoming and outgoing, go missing in the last month or so than I’ve had in the last ten years.

Calls to AP to complain are met with an hour of hold music and their Facebook site is inundated with complaints to which they respond with pure spin.

It’s a really bad situation. If you look at forums and message-boards where Ebay and etsy sellers discuss their businesses, there is a lot of distress about these excessive price hikes.

I’m not sure if there is anything further I can do, but I’m happy to provide more information should you require it.

[curraone]

Really, Australia Post needs to get some English-speaking people to write their stuff:

Does your item qualify as a letter?

To be considered a letter, your item must:

• weigh less than 500g
• contain flexible items only (if being sent within Australia)  
• have a rectangular shape
• be no larger than a B4 envelope (260mm x 360mm x 20mm)
• be no thicker than 20mm

Is your item bigger than this? We would classify this as a small or large parcel.

So what does that mean now ???   if it's being sent overseas, it has to be inflexible?

[audio-spot]

Disregard that abbreviated version, the official postal guide explains it properly.

Small letters (such as DL size envelopes) can't contain items that are not flexible, because they pass through the high speed sorting machines, and can cause damage.

Large letters (such as padded bags, C5 sized envelopes etc) don't pass through this equipment, and so can contain stiff items such as DVDs and CDs.

[goodthingsforsalerobert]

bet they had no way of policing it