A Tale of Two Cities by Australia Post

[Bushmiller]

Just recently I sent a package from Millmerran here in QLD down to Melbourne. It adopted a strange route travelling about 7800Kms instead of 1800kms. It took the scenic route.

Millmerran to Chelsea.png

Yes, It went via Darwin! There are a number of dedicated central processing facilities. Darwin is not one of them. I have not been asked by Australia Post what I thought of their service, possibly because I was the sender not the receiver. Pity that. I think I might be able to offer some suggestions for improvement: Some would not be entirely constructive and others may be considered physically impossible. At least it got there I suppose.

I have noticed that the Aussie tracking system is vastly inferior to the American system, which appears to document absolutely everything. Compare to the one above where it went AWOL for between five and seven days at a time.


Regards
Paul

[Chris Parks]

Three days Melbourne to Darwin is not too shabby at all in my experience!

[Bohdan]

In my case Melbourne to Geelong. There was no tracking available and no parcel. After three weeks the original supplier rang me to say that Aust Post had returned the parcel as undeliverable. They wanted to confirm my address, a PO Box. I confirmed the address, they said that's what's on the parcel and without any alteration sent it again. Three days later it showed up .

[Chris Parks]

I had DHL try and return a parcel to an OS sender for no reason at all not long ago. This sort of stuff happens to every logistics/postal company in the world without exception in my experience. A lot of it is because of human error, try sorting parcels at night when you are tired, mistakes happen and a lot of them. I had to take steps to stop Brisbane containers ending up in Perth because the original loading set up had them adjacent to each other and if the forkies weren't looking it was easy to pick up and load onto the wrong truck. I saw TOLL send the Wollongong trailer, yes the whole trailer to Newcastle and the NC one to Wollongong one night, that caused a bit of a hoopla for a few hours.

[Chesand]

I have just received a parcel from Aldav which he sent yesterday morning in Albury.
I was able to track it down to the street in which the van was once it was in my neighbourhood.

Great service from Fastway couriers.

[Luke Maddux]

Oh, wow... This is hilarious. I suppose "at least it got there" is a good attitude.

When I was living there it seemed like it was impossible to track anything beyond the point when it left Australia or the US, depending on direction. I know nowadays you can at least get a bit of an idea of where it is after it's landed in its destination country, so that's an improvement.

My guess is it "fell" into the wrong bin and headed for warmer temps before finally finding its way home.

[aldav]

As Chris Parks has noted sometimes things go very wrong. Worst case I've had is when Fastway loaded a cage of parcels in Melbourne that was supposed to go to Adelaide on the truck for Perth.

I just received a very intemperate message from a customer concerning his parcel being delivered to his old address. I can only assume that the local Fastway branch (a country one) know him just well enough to know 'where he used to live', but not that he'd moved. That didn't stop him giving me an almighty serve before he'd even checked whether the parcel was correctly addressed.

All that being said I generally find Auspost and Fastway very reliable. God knows how much more we would have to whinge about if we lived in some of the countries that have 'less reliable' services.

[Handyjack]

In March 2015, I purchased a Festool sander from a forum sponsor. One of the things I required was next day delivery before the long weekend. They sent it by Startrack to the hospital where I work. The next day day they got a message of being unable to locate. This is despite multiple visits from Startrack couriers every day. Thankfully for me, they reshipped the order that day (a Friday) with a different courier, who contacted me by phone and I had it that night at home.

[Chief Tiff]

On a positive note; late one evening a couple of weeks ago I ordered a set of Landrover service filters from an interstate vendor, they were delivered the following afternoon!

[BobL]

The local Fastway courier typically delivers between 5 and 6pm and sometimes I watch his movement as he approaches our place via the web. He has this peculiar habit of stopping for about 5 minutes about a block away where he ticks my packages as being delivered. The first time that happened was a bit disconcerting because I was just about to contact Fastway that I didn't receive it when he appears with the package. When I asked him about it he said he ticks off a whole bunch of deliveries as being delivered and then goes and does them.

[Tonyz]

the advantage of small towns...went to a meeting last night and had a parcel dropped in my lap. 'Thought you might be here Tonz, saved me a run out to your place tomorrow'.. not the first time thats happened either.

[John Saxton]

I get emails from Aus Post ( I have a PO Box ) that an item has arrived ,that i also have to pick it up by a certain date. This pees me off as I pay for a PO Box not necessarily cheap but advantageous for me .I understand the storage issue for Aus Post but that has not always been an issue for them ,surely the any directive to return items to the sender is counter productive.

[John Saxton]

I get emails from Aus Post ( I have a PO Box ) that an item has arrived ,that i also have to pick it up by a certain date. This pees me off as I pay for a PO Box not necessarily cheap but advantageous for me .I understand the storage issue for Aus Post but that has not always been an issue for them ,surely the any directive to return items to the sender is counter productive.

[Tonyz]

Text message yesterday.... 'your parcel from Timbcom arriving tomorrow...blah blah etc '
text message this morning...' please pickup your parcel today from Port Lincoln Post Depot/office with google maps directions....derrr,

go pick it up an no card in PO box, into counter explain my situation.... they go looking,....'are you sure its here?'.....'whats your name again'...hells bells we are neighbours....' more searching....'are you sure your box xxxx?'....'yup been that for 8 years'...........' we found it with your old PO box no on it'....'Huh? what old box number'

rest of story. i had a po box 12 years ago for 3 years and cancelled it...well so I thought, moved elsewhere on peninsula, came back 8 years ago register and get new PO box, ALL mail HAS gone to it, but some bozo found our old box and labelled carton accordingly. I have only paid for 1 box each year so how they work out that one box is supposedly registered but not paid for and not getting any mail for 9 years.. velly strange... we all had a good laugh and entertained other customers for 20 minutes or so.

[Chris Parks]

The LPO stuffed up but would not admit it, laughter to cover stuff up seems OK.