Auspost "two speed rate" shonky and badly thought out .. (RANT)

[x3n0m]

The Auspost CEO (Ahmed Fahour) is currently lobbying the federal government to approve a two speed rate on domestic letter articles .. the preposition is that Auspost letter deliveries are not profitable for auspost and the proposal before government is for auspost to impose a premium rate to continue to deliver letter items at their current glacially slow rate; an increase of over 40% from 70cent per stamp to $1 per stamp for a continuation of the current choppy haphazard service .. to appease government the hypnotically convincing CEO suggests to maintain a 70cent rate (the current cost) but that will be regarded as a non premium (slow service) and the intention is that auspost will deliberatety delay those letter items by 3 days to a week thus rendering the service on that lower rate as third class .. the proposal is this two speed system will be run concurrently with Ausposts express post service which also has a letter rate ..

obviously this proposal/proposition by the auppost CEO is devious and counter productive as the postie will obviously be delivering mail on a daily basis as they always have but will be deliberately slowing the letter delivery of those who choose not to pay the additional 40% premium rate .. this double standard double shuffle is supposedly meant to deliver auspost a windfall and the Auspost principles and contractors have already been brainwashed to embrace and spruik this diabolically contrived system as are being starved for revenue by their CEO and the promise is that they will all be flush with cash when this contrived double shuffle swindle comes to fruition in September of 2015. The aupost employees really have no idea of the pain this will bring them in reduced sales and takeup of the higher rates just like when auspost incresed registered postage costs all the way from beneath $2 to the current wildlly complicated system (which averages about $3.95 per single item) without actually increasing the insurance rate (another bogus money-grab) and the current cost of a money order which hovers around $8 is obviously unpallatable in the extreme and is basically a dead product due to the extravagent pricing .. those are just 2 examples and there is more dead products in the works .. obviously the use of those auspost products has reduced to subnormally low levels and I indicate my belief is that price hikes of this kind will actually further damage to Aupsosts revenues .. like what is wrong withg simply increasing the price of a stamp by 5-10 cents or indexing to the Australian inflation rate .. a two speed system is just sloppy and being so badly thought out will in all liklihood actually further damage this very important public utility .. I believe that the intention is to cripple auspost so our giovernment is forced to accept lobbyist proposals to break up or sell off auspost to the highest bidder ..

This same CEO has also apparetly been loobying government to split auspost up and sell parts off and at one point there was a proposal before government to sell the whole business off thus fully privatising it .. the rumour mill went crazy when ebay apparently put in a 1 Billion dollar bid to buy Auspost in its entirity which was considered a lowball offer and thankfully rejected .. the fact that auspost (the countries largest carrier) is now running a secondary internal/external seperate business called "startrack express" further complicates and muddies the waters of where the money is going and call me cynical but this just looks to me like transferal of revenue and tax dodging and profiteering and a sneaky way of breaking up the company as obviously startrack express is a new auspost product which can be spun off and its expensive aquistion coincides with a radical dropoff in profits for aupost which the ceo is blaming on letter delivery which lets face it if auspost can't do that efficiently in this modern age of robots and letter sorting and automation then one must ask what is going on? .. aupsost only recently completed 100% aquistion of startrack express when they bought out qantas of their 50% share in this oddball company ..

to make matters worse as ausposts revenues plummet the Auspost CEO regularly gets his wages increased via some type of inverse performance paramaters and this glorified public servant who is known to announce radical restructures and intentions first to the American chamber of commerce (who is his real boss?) before even aupost employees hear of the upcoming changes and is now remunerated at 4 Milion Dollars per annum from $1 million per annum 10 years back which to put it into perspective his new pay rate is 4 times the pay rate of the $1 Million per annum we pay the Australian Prime Minister .. what do you think? Does Auspost and their CEO smell like roses or is it just more corporate stink?

[phorum_junkie*]

Wow, what a tirade, haven't read it all, life is too short but Aus Post is not proposing to do anything that many other countries, here in the UK included, for many years. The economy is struggling at the moment and the government needs to either cut it's costs or instigate massive rises in taxation. If one way they can save some of the subsidy costs iis by charging a bit more for a faster service then I suspect most people would prefer thst to paying more tax.  People on ebay who send parcels have had significant cost increases over the last few years, now if sellers who use letter post want to get items there quicker they will have to pay a little more. My sympathy level is somewhere between zero and zilch.

[davewil1964]

$1 Million per annum we pay the Australian Prime Minister

The last figure I can find, from 2014, is $539,338, including electoral allowance.

Are you saying he's had a 100% salary increase in the last 12 months? Or that you make up statistics to suit your rant argument? Or that you don't believe your own hyperbole?

I just hope you don't think anybody with 2 braincells to rub together will mistake your novel for fact.

[x3n0m]

So you didn't read my post but decided to comment in the negatory .. anybody else?

[x3n0m]

Jeez .. I am going from memory and read somewhere that the Speaker and PM earn $1mill each .. forgot  the source .. but if what you say is true then it goes even further to highlight my argument  that something is wrong with Auspost ..

[black*poppy]

LOL!

PM's wage - $0.5 mil

CEO Australia Post - $4 mil

Chalk up one for the OP.

Just for the record, it's not "the economy" (LOL) that is the core of AP's problem - plenty of threads  and articles about this.  Also, AP is a "government enterprise"  - not a funded body like the ABC, so sadly for us we can't blame Abbot for this one :-(.  In a nutshell AP has to make money - and it does.  Not with government handouts.

So we are getting a service that costs twice as much that travels at half the speed. Yay!  We have a service that costs about twice as much compared to other OECD countries. Yay for us again!  Despite this, the CEO is paid an OUTRGEOUS income, eight times the PM! What a lucky country (for some)! 😛 

[phorum_junkie*]

We have a service that costs about twice as much compared to other OECD countries

UK large letter 1st class - £1.26 = Au$2.50

UK large lettr 2nd class - £1.19 = AU$ 36

Since when did AP charge $5 for a large letter?

[pennyforum14]

PJ...they don't....yet.

If they get this thing through, the proposal is to increase the regular stamp rate from 70c to $1.  Extrapolate that out using the formula they follow for large letters and it means large letters will go from $1.40 to $2, $2.10 to $3 and $3.50 to $5.

While the OP is somewhat hysterical and exaggerated, I must admit to some concern given that 90% of my items go large letter.

Moreover, AP is not losing money overall, they are still making hefty profits, just not as hefty as in past years.  The drop may be largely due to the downturn in letter post, but profits on parcels have gone up at a much faster rate.  Given that letter post is not open to private industry, AP has to continue the service, and as a government enterprise I would think they have a responsibility to do so at a reasonable price for a reasonable service level.  Rather than jack up the price and drop the service level, they should treat letter post as a loss leader to get the customers through the door and expose them to all the other add on services they now offer.  Let;s face it, most PO stores are more like general stores, stationers and gift shops these days.

[x3n0m]

Since when did AP charge $5 for a large letter?

.. after September 2015 that is exactly what Auspost propose to do Phorum Junkie.. exactly $5 for a large letter over 250grams to be delivered in the same time frame as today within Australia .. you call that 1st class rate in England in Australia it is just the standard service .. not express, not 1st class, just standard .. so what Australians are anticipating if the government gets conned/hypnotised into this by Fahour and thus greenlights the two speed rate system is a rise of over 40% in costs for what we call the standard rate of postage.. you really should have perhaps read my opening post and tried to interprit it rationally  ..

---------------------------------------------------

And I will also add in reply to Black Poppys comment "In a nutshell AP has to make money - and it does.  Not with government handouts."

Australia post has historically made good profit year in and year out with the exception of an aberrant year or two for many many years prior to it being corporatised to auspost etc and in all honesty cannot understand why the government wanted to corporatise it in the first place .. in fact as far as government utilities it was the only one that was making handsome profits year in year out, a blue chip Government utility if you like .. these days the government gets a cut off the top from the profit from the corporatised auspost operations so it is actually a sneaky tax being levied at Australians anyway ..

and judging by the looks of misery on the PO operators faces they for the most part all look unhappy, contractors and sub contractors, stressville just walking into a PO these days .. for the mostpart staffed by tired and miserable looking people .. aside from Ahmed that is and in all honesty I kinda wonder what the other auspost and Startrack Express executives are earning as that could go a long way to explaining where the profits are disappearing to also .. like if Ahmend is on $4 mill what does his secretary earn etc etc etc .. I don't want to dredge up statistics right now but suffice to say they are out there, maybe some Journo may like to round them up one day (soon hopefully) , there really should be a serious investigation into what is going on .. not being argumentative here Black Poppy just pointing out that there is really some strange and apparently destructive forces at work within auspost  ..

[davewil1964]

---

@x3n0m wrote:

Jeez .. I am going from memory and read somewhere that the Speaker and PM earn $1mill each .. forgot  the source .. but if what you say is true then it goes even further to highlight my argument  that something is wrong with Auspost ..

---

Exactly my point. You pulled figures out of your anatomy. Pays to ascertain truth before you attempt to espouse it.

I did actually read you novel, but given your constant negativity to all things eBay/AP, gave it the 95% discount it deserved.

My advice, which you will doubtless ignore, is to not use eBay or AP.