An Open Letter To Australia Post

Dear Australia Post

As an Aussie business, we'd love to support the national carrier and use your services to send our thousands of customer parcels each year.

However, it's simply bad for our business to do so.

Here's an example why. Let's say that we want to send a 750g item from our warehouse (Bunbury) to Sydney.

You're More Expensive:

- Our preferred courier service charges $8.11 for overnight delivery.

- You charge us $13.11 for a Standard Post satchel (5-7 business days) or $14.87 for an Express Post satchel (which unfortunately is not overnight from Bunbury)

You're Slower:

- Our preferred courier service is almost always overnight

- Your Express Post service is not overnight from Bunbury

You're Less Reliable:

- After sending tens of thousands of packages, the stats don't lie. Australia Post lose over twice as many deliveries as our courier provider

You Take Too Long To Investigate:

If the worst happens and our customer's package gets lost...

- We can usually get an answer within 24 hours from our preferred courier service

- Unfortunately it usually takes over 10 business days for Australia Post to do an investigation

You Don't Provide Compensation:

If it turns out that the package was never delivered...

- Our preferred courier service compensates for the loss

- Australia Post's response is "You should have taken out insurance"

Sometimes, You're A Little Behind The Times:

We receive several international shipments per week. The majority of these come into Australia via Fedex, UPS etc. When they do, customs duties are organised and paid within hours. But on some occasions, with different shipping providers, they end up in the hands of Australia Post. When this happens you insist on posting (ie. snail mail) the customs duties forms to us instead of emailing them. This results in a further 7-10 day delay before we pay the duties and have the good released. We have contacted you over a dozen times about this, but your final answer is that your systems and contract with customs requires you to post the invoice, not email it. 

Can you see how bad for business using Australia Post is?

Unfortunately, when customers insist on using a Post Office Box or Parcel Locker, we have no choice but to use Australia Post. However, we have proof that our eBay feedback rating is being negatively affected because customers are marking those shipments as "took too long to deliver", even though we ship the same day and use your Express Post service.

I have submitted this feedback to you dozens of times over the years, but the response has always been "Sorry, that's how it is unfortunately". Here's hoping you can take this open letter as constructive feedback and start to make some changes there.

Cheers
Graeme Olsen
www.hurtlegear.com.au