So frustrated... large letter rates

[retrogeekaustralia]

Hey guys, Just venting my frustration here. I went to post a product today which i normally send through at my local post office as a large letter. However this particular customer wished to have it sent express and being fairly late in the afternoon i decided to take a trip down to another post office with longer trading hours. Upon asking to send it express she asked me if it was merchandise or a document. I sort of ummed and arred and so i made it pretty obvious it wasn't a document. She then tells me i have to send it in a 500g express satchel which is going to cost me over $10 instead of the $5.55 it says on the australia post website to send as a large letter. I then asked, can't anything be regarded as a document as long as in within the 20mm limit? Which she said no as it has to go through an automatic feeder.

So i was almost going to send it as a parcel when i decided to grab it out of her hands and said i would take it to my local post office, thank you very much. Now my poor customer has to wait an extra day, although he did only pay for the item about an hour ago so i guess this is still acceptable.

Just wondering what everyone elses experience with sending items as large letters? It's obvious everybody does it and i always assumed it was fine. I post nearly 20 items a day that way and never had one back. Whenever i have taken these to my local post office none of the staff there have ever had an issue with it.

So frustrating!!! This particular parcel just looks like an envelope as well, the item is so thin it looks like theres nothing even in it. I wish i had of just said it was a document!

[little*lotus!!]

Even though some post offices let you get away with it,  the prepaid express envelope is only meant for letters & documents. It actually  mentions that on the envelope...frustrating, I know!

[dylan11235813]

There is still no clear indication of what a document is and the service is called an express post letter service. Also in their fantastic booklet they say what can be placed (or should be placed) into a small letter but not a large letter. Are they doing this on purpose? In fact the section about large letter inclusions is completely missing.

These Aus Post people really need to work a little harder to produce a document that can be easily understood and be less ambiguous.

After all their changes, continued ambiguity,  their recent breach of privacy laws (just my opinion, but knowingly allowing public access to customer data??), lack of staff training and diminished service, one would think the service would be cheaper. But no they just purchased another 3000 scanners for god knows what, most of the time my parcels don't get scannned anyway.

All my local post office staff are great and I am definately not having a go at them.

[patchoo78]

Regardess of what is counted as a document and what isn't, I wouldn't be posting anything other than paper in an envelope designed for posting paper.. I once thought it would be ok to send an SD card in a regular envelope but at the other end all that arived was a ripped envelope and no SD Card

Anything sent in a regular envelope should be only paper.as they go though a sorting machine at a pretty high speed and could get ripped, which is likely what happened in my situation..

Sure, you CAN post things that aren't paper documents in an envelope, but if you want it to arrive at the other end safely you probably shouldn't

[annies_fancy_dress]

I pad flat objects with card board(cut out sometimes) so it looks like a letter.

As I pay over $200 per week(average), my little post office doesn't check.

They don't ask, I don't lie, it looks like a stack of papers, and it's prepackaged.

No-one argues, and I just hand it over with the rest.

But, it's not a common thing, most things I post are standard or express parcels.