Rural post office has to deal with buyer frauds

[k9tardus]

We have a small rural post office with a part time postie and we all pick up our parcels at the pub. Our poor postmaster has had a rude shock, seems trusting people when you run a PO is a bad thing. Because she knows everyone, if you don't take in your parcel "card", it didn't matter. People have now taken advantage of this and have done the "missing parcel" claim to get free goods. We now have to take our cards in to collect our parcels and sign in the book for each one. We've always signed for registered parcels, but gone are the days of "popping in" on the way home to see if you have mail and our poor postie now has to fill out a card and a book and she only gets paid for 3hrs.  Thanks thieves!

[putney32]

well, I have to say, as an eBay Seller, I am very pleased that Australia Post is enforcing their own rules.

maybe the PO lady should put application to Aust Post to increase her hours to cover the increasing number of parcels/packets being handled due to on-line shopping.

[tonalidesigns]

Actually that's really sad - a small community now has distrust. We are losing a lot of our "humanity".

[extra-keen]

Wow, that's very frustrating and sad. I am just curious as to how they could put in a claim for a parcel that never existed, with or without having to sign for parcels. Who were they claiming off? They would have to have some proof of an item being sent in the first place?

[ajarnjenny]

I took it to mean that they were expecting a parcel and picked it up informally at the pub and then claimed that they did not get it.

[putney32]

--yes that's what I understood too.

so, after the claim is made, for non delivery, the Postmistress will know just exactly who the 'fraudsters' are in town, if she is sure the parcel was actually picked up.

[k9tardus]

Yes, our postmaster knows very well who the fraudsters are! So now she's drowning in paperwork from these fraudsters. She told me that all ebay sellers should use "click and send" so parcels have to be signed for. That should stop the fraudsters

[extra-keen]

IMO Unfortunately it won't because requesting a signature is $2.95 extra on top of the cheapest Click and send satchell at 15c plus $7.15 postage. I only use signature when the items get to over $50.00. For folks selling low value items it just isn't worth it. The item ends up costing less then the postage, somestimes by quite a bit.

[putney32]

click and send does not have to be signed for, unless the sender pays $3extra for signature