LOL re note crikey .....

Its tricky with some PO staff ... but if you have the form completed ready for them to stamp - it will hopefully make a difference to their "attitude" in providing the services in accordance with the T&C of their products.

The good thing about the lodgement form is that unlike the online calculation - if you look at the form you will see that is where you fill in the additional extra cover - and you only have to pop in the actual amount required over $100 to $5000 and the calculation is from the figure in the box, which is the value of goods, less the first $100.  So there is no need to raise or debate this with PO staff, as the value of goods sent only comes into play if required for missing or damaged parcel compensation claims.

In relation to the situation of the PO staff indicating that they cannot process extra cover separately from a package that has its post prepaid, IMO it is likely they just don't know how to. 

My suggestion is maybe very, very nicely suggest that maybe they have process the seperate transaction for extra cover, in a similar way as they would when someone required extra cover on an article that was lodged with a pre-paid registered post label ? ?