@offroad7400 wrote:
Story on ABC last week about Australia Post's higher pricing for rural senders and receivers which raised the point about the Universal Service Obligation of a fair and equitable postal service for everyone.
Australia Post has written to Deputy Nationals Leader David Littleproud saying it will review its pricing structure.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-25/australia-post-reviews-pricing-following-complaints/12503376
I don't so much have a problem with their rates being a little different (higher) to rural and remote areas (from eg metro areas), in so much as I have a huge problem with which areas they've designated "rural", and that none of it is really distance (from the sender) based like it used to be.
Before, if you were sending intrastate within a certain distance, you'd get really good rates and all that mattered was the distance between where it was lodged and the delivery address, if it was outside the zone for that, you still got better rates than an interstate parcel, but not quite as good as one only going a few k's away. The distance one would be difficult to do via systems like My Post though, so I can see why they might not make it available through there.
Slightly cheaper for interstate metro than interstate rural also makes sense to me, but calling something that is almost walking distance from me "rural" is a bit rich, as is charging more to deliver a package there than they do to somewhere the transport costs would be significantly higher, especially since they've deemed areas further away from me than the rural ones to be "other major city" and charge lower than rural prices for those, but higher prices than whatever they've deemed within metro Adelaide.
That is, I pay three different rates for intrastate parcels, depending on the destination rather than my actual location.
These days I just prepare myself for disappointment any time I enter an address into My Post, and so then am very occasionally surprised by a slight repreive if it pops up with a higher discount. 
