topic Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post? in Buying

How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 09:08:58 GMT

Hi,

I do not want to use Australia Post for non-delivery of anything ever again. The hour and a half I would need to spend collecting a parcel is costs me 3 times more than the item. Australia post never deliver parcels, only cards in your mailbox.

I recently had a good experience with fast-away couriers. Is there some way I can filter or search for sellers who do not use Australia Post? Or, are sellers generally willing to negotiate price for an alternative delivery method?

If there is no way to purchase items on ebay without using Australia Post, then I guess I will just need to buy on Amazon, who DO actually deliver your items.

Thanks and regards,

iktbay

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

lyndal1838 — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 13:27:07 GMT

If you are not at home to take delivery of a parcel from Australia Post then they will leave a card for you to collect it from your local post office, maybe a few kilometres away.

If you are not at home when a courier delivers a parcel they will leave a card for you to arrange another delivery time. If you cannot arrange another time you will have to collect it from the courier depot which could be 50 kilometres away from you and often has much more restricted opening times than Australia Post.

I doubt that there would be many sellers who would use a courier delivery for a one off parcel for one buyer.....there are few courier services that work that way. You normally have to have an account with a courier for delivery of most/all of your parcels.

As for having a good experience with Fastway couriers....for your one good experience of them you can probably find dozens of posts on the boards from people who do not like them at all and will not deal with sellers who use them.

I regularly get deliveries from Queensland from a seller who uses Fastway and I have never yet had a fast, fuss free delivery from that seller. I use that seller because they are the best seller for the items I want but if I was really concerned about the speed of delivery and having to arrange redelivery then I would run a mile. Even being home all day, everyday, I often still have to arrange redelivery as the courier who delivers in my area seems to be allergic to knocking on doors.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

amber-eyed-girl — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 13:59:58 GMT

Amazon parcels are also delivered by Australia Post.

Have you tried speaking with your postie? or mention it to your local post office?

My postie left cards because he couldn't find the front door. I caught him one day and asked him to knock for a signature, and it's been fine since then.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

harley_babes_hoard — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 22:21:37 GMT

Everything I have ever tried to buy from amazon say sorry can't delivery to your area or some such rubbish. I have given up on amazon completely now.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:02:41 GMT

Regardless of whether I am home or not, Australia Post leaves a card in my mailbox. They just don't deliver parcels at all. I've had Australia Post forge delivery times and signatures. As a general rule, Australia Post delivers cards, not parcels.

It is irrelevant how far the post office is from me. To collect a parcel takes around an hour and a half of my time. 15 minutes each way to the post office, and an hour waiting in line to collect my parcel. An hour and a half has an economic value of $115 to me. Why would I spend $115 of my time to collect a $30 parcel, when the reason I order online in the first place is to save that very time searching for items in retail shops?

I hear what you are saying about courier delivery, I have had the same experience at different addresses, however I have never had a receipted parcel delivered by Aust Post, and I just don't have the time or incentive to spend hours collecting parcels that I paid to have delivered. I may as well just order from Amazon, who DO deliver items to my mailbox.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:08:44 GMT

Well, Amazon must know how to get Aust Post to leave my parcel in the security mail room then.

There is no point speaking to my postie, I am not home during the day. I have this thing called work I need to attend while Aust Post are not delivering parcels to me.

If there was some way I could collect a parcel in 10 minutes instead of an hour, then I could probably duck out at lunch and collect it. Sadly, Aust Post is as poor at parcel collection as they are at delivery, so this option is unavailable to me.

Never mind, Amazon will soon sell everything, I just have to wait.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

digital*ghost — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:08:57 GMT

@iktbay wrote:
I may as well just order from Amazon, who DO deliver items to my mailbox.

Amazon don't deliver anything, they send things and the postal services deliver them. When they arrive in Australia, it's Australia Post who deliver them, so I'm not sure why your packages for items bought on Amazon are treated any differently than those bought from eBay. How many purchases have you made from each site (in order to determine the difference in how the parcels are treated).

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:13:31 GMT

Amazon don't deliver anything, they send things and the postal services deliver them. When they arrive in Australia, it's Australia Post who deliver them, so I'm not sure why your packages for items bought on Amazon are treated any differently than those bought from eBay. How many purchases have you made from each site (in order to determine the difference in how the parcels are treated).

I have purchased 5 times from Amazon, all delivered to door or mailbox. I have purchased 8 times from ebay, 1 delivered to mailbox (I think because it was tiny), 7 carded.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

jensmanchester-australia — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:23:19 GMT

You could look at signing up for the Australia Post Locker Service which could solve most of your problems with AP.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

digital*ghost — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:24:21 GMT

Depending on the size of the packages, they may have been handled differently (small parcels are generally meant to be delivered by the regular postie with letters etc, larger ones by a contractor). There have been a few mentions on the boards of posties who will always card rather than take the parcels out for delivery, but the contractor's sole job is to deliver parcels, so that might be one explanation and it's possible the parcels from Amazon are being given to the contractor regardless of size, though if that were the case I suspect it wouldn't have anything to do with Amazon themselves, as I often get small parcels from OS delivered to my street address by the postie, but some others (of the same small size and from the same company) are delivered by a contractor.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:25:03 GMT

How does the locker service work with items that are receipted delivery? Is delivery to the locker considered to be a 'receipt'?

@jensmanchester wrote:
You could look at signing up for the Australia Post Locker Service which could solve most of your problems with AP.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

jensmanchester-australia — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:30:19 GMT

Yes it is. Once you collect the parcel from the locker it is considered delivered.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

cq_tech — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 23:38:35 GMT

This is quite likely no longer relevant, but I bought a number of items from Amazon about 3 years ago now, and AP took no part whatsoever in their ultimate delivery to my front door.

Every single Amazon order I received was delivered by DHL couriers, although from what I've been reading in here, that has clearly changed (and apparently for the worse). I've no idea why, because there's an absolutely immense DHL depot just up the road at Crestmead, no more than 2km from where I live. Go figure.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:05:54 GMT

@jensmanchester wrote:
Yes it is. Once you collect the parcel from the locker it is considered delivered.

Sorry, according to the Aust Post website that is not correct.

http://auspost.com.au/parcels-mail/parcel-lockers.html

Items not accepted to Parcel Lockers

You can have any parcel sent to your 24/7 Parcel Locker, except:

letters and standard mail that can be delivered to your letterbox
Express Post letters
parcels larger than 39cm x 36cm x 64cm
parcels that are heavier than 16kg
parcels that require proof of identity
parcels that require a signature on delivery
parcels that require the recipient's ID to be recorded at delivery
parcels where there is a payment required on delivery
parcels that are damaged or unsuitably packaged
parcels delivered by a courier that has chosen not to deliver to our parcel lockers
parcels containing alcohol
parcels containing perishables

It is my understanding that receipted delivery requires a signature. Leave it to Australia Post to create a new service equally as useless as their current service.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:12:26 GMT

@cq_tech wrote:
This is quite likely no longer relevant, but I bought a number of items from Amazon about 3 years ago now, and AP took no part whatsoever in their ultimate delivery to my front door.

Every single Amazon order I received was delivered by DHL couriers, although from what I've been reading in here, that has clearly changed (and apparently for the worse). I've no idea why, because there's an absolutely immense DHL depot just up the road at Crestmead, no more than 2km from where I live. Go figure.

I just got an expedited delivery from Amazon yesterday. I ordered last Wednesday and selected expedited delivery because one of the items was a Christmas present. So whomever Amazon uses, they were able to pack, send and DELIVER TO MY MAILBOX from the United States in FOUR BUSINESS DAYS.And it was still cheaper than buying the items from an Australian store.

Contrast this with a small item I ordered more than a week ago on ebay that I still don't have in my possession because Aust Post can't be bothered delivering parcels. I guess Aust Post is just a retail shop now selling calenders and the like. Maybe they should contract out the delivery part in it's entirety to an organisation with experience in actually delivering parcels to people.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

boris1gary — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:41:00 GMT

The workers of Australia Post do a great job, especially considering how understaffed and underpaid they are. It's so annoying the constant whinging that goes on. I sell and buy, I get my parcels in good time and so do my buyers. The amount of carry on when something is a couple of days later than the estimated time is ridiculous, if people are that impatient go to the shop.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

ajarnjenny — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:56:15 GMT

My daughter was expecting delivery of an item the other day, from a courier. She was at home with her son and he noticed that the front gate was open, so they checked that the animals were all still in and looked around the verandah to see if the courier had come and not knocked on the open front door, didn't find anything, so was still waiting for the parcel and much later she went into her other son's bedroom and found a parcel on the floor under the slightly open window.

It was quite a heavy parcel and it had been forced in through the window and dropped on the floor. It was ok, but...........what if a baby had been sleeping in a cot under the window?

How dangerous.

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 08:41:10 GMT

@boris1gary wrote:

The workers of Australia Post do a great job, especially considering how understaffed and underpaid they are. It's so annoying the constant whinging that goes on. I sell and buy, I get my parcels in good time and so do my buyers. The amount of carry on when something is a couple of days later than the estimated time is ridiculous, if people are that impatient go to the shop.

Yes, the notion of a commercial contract where one party exchanges legal tender for a product or service is definitely ridiculous. Why should the other party deliver the service when they could just take the money and do nothing in return?

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

howie696 — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 02:56:35 GMT

get a post office box 🙂

solves heaps of problems

Re: How do I find sellers that do not use australia post?

iktbay — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 03:14:00 GMT

How does a PO Box solve the problem of receipted delivery?