Australia Post is worse than ever!

[kitty-kat-kollection]

My partner has posted 12 items out, all in a small prepaid satchel, since mid January, and out of those 12, 4 have gone missing and 1 had an issue that required intervention.

Compensation was received for the 4 lost parcels, but COME ON! That's a QUARTER of parcels just gone!!!

All of them get to a main sorting centre near the final destination but never make it out of that sorting centre.

This is ridiculous!

[south.coffee]

How many times have you received a parcel / present / gift and touched and feeled and squeezed the packaging, wrapping to work out what's inside ?  Have you ever not received a 'plastic card' sent by letter post ?

When eBay began printing a code on the eBay and Australia Post mailing label, I decided to remove it and I no longer use eBay satchels, all to hide the origin of my customers orders.

Today I have decided to also remove the eBay item number from the label reference field.  I am not paranoid, but thought I would minimise potential losses even further, by allowing 'prying eyes' not to look up the parcels contents and potentially steal it.

Hang on - maybe I am paranoid after all ?

[jellybirddesigns]

Sounds really weird - I have found Aus Post to be reliable, if a little slower than I would like.

The only time I've ever had missing parcels is once when a contractor truck caught fire, which resulted in 3-4 parcels plus some letters literally going up in smoke. 

I send more than 1000 orders a year, and in 5 years I can count on one hand how many items have ever gone missing.

Fortunately all parcels are now automatically insured up to $100 (it used to be $50), so in most cases nobody will be out of pocket.

[south.coffee]

Unfortunately for sellers, we bare the brunt of buyers whose order has been delayed, lost, stolen or destroyed somewhere in the delivery chain when it is not our fault.  An overdue delivery I reported to AP yesterday has finally shown up and should be delivered today and I suspected that would happen.  The second and closer to home one is still 'Lost in Space' but I suspect that will turn up too as I put Mulder & Scully onto that case...

With any luck the buyer can go fishing this weekend !  (Man - do those guys get knarkey at times)  Talk about  P. T. F. D. ?

[countessalmirena]

AP certainly have some off-days. I'd ordered something last week, express mail, sent in time by the company (and both the company and I are in the express zone), and it should have arrived Thursday or Friday.

it didn't. For some reason it showed as having arrived at the nearest centre, then not, then having been scanned, then having been sent back to the Melbourne centre, and never having been scanned, and bing in transit but no one knew where... 

Finally it's apparently arrived, according to my email updates. (I haven't yet checked with home today to be sure of arrival.)

It's arrived too late for intended purpose. Ah well... I found an alternative on Sunday, involving a two hour drive. I was just glad to have sourced what I needed!

[kitty-kat-kollection]

Ahh yes, so we are not alone in these happenings!

Firstly, no, each mail sorting centre was different. That's the weird thing. The Melbourne centre was just the most recent one. That parcel SHOULD have gone out the next day as Hawthorn is close to the city.

Another one went through Redbank Plains and was supposed to get to somewhere else in Brisbane but never left Redbank Plains.

Another one seemed to sit in Sydney for EVER before finally moving to a regional mail centre where it was never seen again.

The 4th one went to Woolworths in Hawthorn in WA. It was a click & collect one, and was delivered and "left in a safe place". Woolworths couldn't locate it. The buyer was angry. An investigation was lodged with Auspost simply to show the buyer that my partner had taken action, though we knew all they'd say was that the parcel was marked as "delivered".

So Auspost did indeed say this, and then once the buyer was advised, they became more angry and said Woolworths still could not find it.

Weirdly, a WEEK after that first "delivered and left in a safe place" tracked event, the same item was delivered again and again "delivered and left in a safe place". This time, Woolworths received it. The buyer was very happy.

So...I feel bad and quite confused for my partner. As I said, I post a lot of parcels every week, and maybe have had 4 lost ones in over 18 months!

Like me, my partner uses normal prepaid satchels and very neatly hand writes both the buyer address and the return address. (none have ever arrived back. One of my missing 4 did)

I sell clothes...perhaps boring for potential thieves. My partner's parcels are well packed but are clearly CDs, DVDs and books. Hmmmmmm.

[south.coffee]

I think I know what happened to your Woolworths parcel...amongst our home shop delivery was an odd satchel squeezed in between the pineapple and dragon fruit.  It was used as packaging to protect the fruit spines... I sent it back to Woolworths with the following weeks delivery (it wasn't my size).

Sorry about that...

[*tippy*toes*]

Kitty, you are obviously using the mobile site on you phone. Anyone who uses the mobile site shows as replying to the original message. Please start your messages with, for example @tippy or @lyndal, so people know who you are replying to. Otherwise, it's extremely hard to know who you are talking to and sometimes can be hard to make sense of a post. 

[kitty-kat-kollection]

Sorry @tippy!

@south.coffee HA!!! So THAT'S where it went!!!

[heihachi_73]

Been quite a while since a VicRail Fast Parcels van went past my station!

[south.coffee]

SShhhhhh don't tell anyone - it's a TOP SECRET test, we stick a bunch of eBay parcels on a train every week to see if, when and where they end up !....