07 May

A Warning About Australia Post Parcel Delivery

I have to admit to being just a little bit annoyed at the way that some parcels were delivered to my house recently. It used to be that someone would knock on the door and if you didn’t answer they would leave a card in your letter box to let you know you had a parcel and it was waiting to be picked up back at the post office. Apparently that has not been the case for quite some time.

I’m not sure when the change was made but the way it works now is the parcel is left somewhere on your property (next to the front door in my case) unless the sender has paid an additional fee to require a signature at the delivery point. On the Australia Post website it clearly states:

 

[hilight color=”FFFF00″]Parcel deliveries begin at 7am every business day and end at 5pm. Every attempt will be made to delivery(sic) your parcel personally and a signature obtained where the sender has requested this additional service.[/hilight]

 

Over the past 12 months or so I’ve received around a dozen parcels via Aust Post and in every case no attempt was made to deliver it personally. The parcels have been left at my front door, in clear view from the footpath which is only around 2 metres away. It would take just a few seconds for someone to jump the one metre fence, grab the parcel and continue on their way.

After doing some searching I’ve very quickly found a discussion that has been ongoing since 2009 about this very subject. Interestingly, the original complaints were generally about Australia Post not attempting to deliver – but it used to be that they would put the card in your letter box. Now it seems that they can’t be bothered taking parcels back to the post office and they can’t be bothered knocking on doors and delivering so they simply drop (or in some cases, throw) the parcel at your door.

Here are some links to the discussion:

Part 1:  http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1286809

Part 2: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1563330&p=-1&#bottom

What are your thoughts? Have you had any bad experiences?