Australia Post to begin charging for holding undelivered parcels from 1 August

[kopi.tea]

Are they out of their minds!?

What will they think of next? 😞

http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/australia-post-to-begin-charging-for-holding-undelivered-par...

[tasfleur]

"And coffee testing cat

Sorry, could'nt help myself. Bad bear go shush now"

[fulcan1234]

If Australia Post offered a good service and actually delivered parcels rather than put a sneaky card in a mail box as a number of contractors do rather than deliver a parcel then it may be fair, but the fact is they are poor at delivering parcels.  Many contractors could not care and would prefer to card rather than deliver a parcel.

Further, there will now be an incentive for contractors NOT to deliver a parcel as they or the Post Office can now earn extra fees.  Buyers will start to incur these fees and yes they will get upset with Australia Post but many will also get upset with sellers and this is out of a sellers control.  Buyers will start to mark down on delivery and possibly you might see an increase in neutral and negative feedback.

Australia Post really need to get their customer service fixed first and their delivery service as it is currently poor. 

I see this will eventually be a big negative for sellers and eBay should be lobbying Australia Post to not do this. 

I can see that some buyers will possibly avoid sellers who use Australia Post which means less buyers of biddders in Auctions ( I know I would). 

Poor decision by Australia Post.

[jeni!!]

Maybe they're trying to encourage people to use the free postal locker thingies?

There aren't any in my area, but I can sse the benefits if you had them nearby.

[digital*ghost]

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@fulcan1234 wrote:

If Australia Post offered a good service and actually delivered parcels rather than put a sneaky card in a mail box as a number of contractors do rather than deliver a parcel then it may be fair, but the fact is they are poor at delivering parcels.  Many contractors could not care and would prefer to card rather than deliver a parcel.

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That's a good point, there are a lot of parcels where delivery is never attempted, so I can definitely see the ire in not being able to collect for X days and being charged for it, but being home at the time delivery should/could have been made. 

[*tippy*toes*]

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@jeni!! wrote:

Maybe they're trying to encourage people to use the free postal locker thingies?

There aren't any in my area, but I can sse the benefits if you had them nearby.

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That's a bit hard when parcel lockers are only available in the city areas. Rural and regional areas dont have them. My closest is 4 hours away!

[*tippy*toes*]

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@imastawka wrote:

I got  'Cos that's where your area gets sent to,  we can't hold them here'

What the?   Has someting to do with boundaries

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My local PO used to only hold small parcels, larger ones went to the main PO in the main street. I used to dread getting larger parcels as you needed to take a packed lunch to have while you waited. A few months ago they formed a boundary, so now all parcels east of the railway line go to my small PO that I frequent (YAY!!) and all parcels west of the tracks go to the main street (suffer!!).

I've actually started using Parcel Collect, so all my parcels get sent to the PO and I get an email or text message to say it's ready to collect. The best part about Parcel Collect is, you can get your stuff sent to ANY PO you like. It doesn't have to be the one closest to you, it can be the one most convenient to you. It also means that say for example I was going to visit my mother on the coast for a few weeks, I can get stuff sent to the PO near her place instead.

In regards to the OP, the thread I started about this a couple of weeks ago I mentioned, from memory my local postmaster said that it was 7 days for regular mail, 14 days for My Post customers (it's free to join and does have a lot of benefits for both buyers and sellers) and 30 days for PO box holders. It was an incentive to use more of their services.

[pennyforum14]

Seems fair enough to me.  

It's not as though they're charging the minute you're carded

What I object to most about this is not that they are going to charge, but that their announcement stated that their customers had asked for longer holding times so they were giving them to us, like they are doing us a favour.  In fact, they are actually halving the holding time.  Let me explain.

At the moment, if I am not at home when the parcel man dleivers, I get a card and have ten days to collect the parcel from the PO.  If I don't collect it in those ten days, they return to sender and I have to pay the seller a scond postage fee to have them resend the parcel, so that's ten days, before it starts to cost me money.

With this new announcement, Auspost will hold the parcel for up to 30 days, BUT, I only have five days to collect it before it starts to cost me money, so they are in fact halving the initial hold time. 

I would have no issue at all if they introduced a fee for overdue pickups, as long as the initial holding period was the same as it is now.  Now matter how they spin it, it equates to a reduction of service UNLESS you choose to pay more.

[davidc4430]

i think its pretty obvious AP is going broke and is looking at every oportunity to get more income.

they dont have a problem paying a CEO a rediculous amount of money whilst the ship is sinking tho.

i'd have thought as one of the first cost cutting revenue raising plans would be reduce outlandish pay packets of not very clever staff.

i'm also sure there would be a huge number of aplicants for said CEO position at half the presents wage package.

[lind9650]

The biggest scam with this proposal is that Australia Post overlooks all the complaints about failed deliveries when buyers were at home, and falsified signatures by dodgy parcel postmen and women.

No cards being left and peopple getting final notices as their first informatin that their parcel has been waiting for pick-up 10 days later.

Australia Post is going to make money from lazy and dishonest delivery contractors.

How convenient for AP?

Erica

[mountainherbs-123]

You are right they shooting themselves. Parcels usually don't get delivered if you need to sign. If it can be dropped off they do.

It is not that contractors are lazy, I read that they are simply underpaid (that the bg boss can get a bit more).

If as a customer you have to pay various times the fee, you will probably stay away from online purchases.