Australia Post to begin charging for holding undelivered parcels

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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AUSTRALIA POST is set to start charging up to $9 for customers to pick up undelivered parcels in a change to delivery services announced today.

The once-government run delivery giant says the initiative, due to be introduced later this year, was formulated in response to customer demand.

Undelivered parcels are currently held at post offices for 10 days at no cost before being returned to sender. But Australia Post says its customers want their packages to be held longer, and they think they’ll be happy to pay.

From August 1, if a package isn’t collected within five days, its recipient would have to hand over $3 to pick it up.

An additional $3 will be charged for each week the package is held. Packages will be held for up to 30 days with customers paying up to $9 to retrieve an item.

In a statement sent to news.com.au, an Australia Post spokesman said the idea was to allow customers more time to collect their parcels.

“Most customers want to pick up their parcel quickly, with 92 per cent of parcels collected within five days,” he said.

“We believe this service will help the small amount of customers who can’t collect their parcel straight away.”

Australia Post said it had conducted “extensive market research” before proposing the changes, speaking with more than 1500 customers.


“They have told us they want to avoid parcels being returned to sender and they would go out of their way to pick it up sooner to avoid the fee,” the spokesman said.

Speaking on 3AW radio, the company’s manager of postal services Christine Corbett said the changes were expected to make “a few million” for the company, which she said was “a very nominal amount”.

Communication Workers’ Union spokeswoman Joan Doyle told news.com.au there would be outrage over the “new service”.

“We think it’ll bring a lot of grief to our members at the retail shops who’ll cop a bit of abuse,” she said.

“We just think it’s another price gouge by the CEO of Australia Post and another step away from the right to receive mail as a community service.”

Australia Post has said it will drop the “Hold at Post” service if public reaction is negative.

Ms Doyle said she was confident a backlash would force Australia Post to “moderate some of the plans”.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman says Australia Post is the second most complained about entity in its jurisdiction.

Already this year the delivery giant has caused public outrage over increasing the price of stamps and changes to delivery times.

In January, the price of a regular stamp rocketed from 70 cents to one dollar, and delivery times for regular parcels were pushed out by two days.

The changes were made in response to a decline in traditional letter volumes.

Despite looking less and less likely to make a profit ever again — in February Australia Post announced an 84 per cent slide in half year profits — the company has been forced to defend its CEO’s multi-million dollar salary.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Its not going down well.

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John Birmingham: Australia Post's $9 pick-up service enough to make me go postal

As a rule I try not to do business with criminal organisations. It never ends well.

Because of this I'll be cutting ties with Australia Post.

Australia Post's well-paid executives won't have to answer to angry customers who've just been told they have to pay for a package they know the sender already paid for

Like most people, residual fondness and simple inertia kept me using the old dinosaur even as it cut services, increased prices and turned the local post office into a Two Dollar Shop full of one dollar crap with 10 dollar price tags. But this latest plan to charge people to pick up undelivered parcels is the end.

It seems Oz Post CEO Ahmed Fahour might have found the perfect way to finally kill off the business. Paying millions to his executive team while laying off 900 postal workers who actually did something useful like, you know, delivering the post, was a good start.

But shaking down punters to collect packages that have already been paid for by the sender is the coup de grace.

I think it's almost certainly illegal. Oz Post has no contract with the recipient of the package, you see. The contract to deliver, for which payment has been made, was with the sender.

You can't forcibly create a contract for which payment is demanded just by holding onto somebody's stuff and putting out your hand. Not unless you're going into competition with the mafia. It's not just an insane way to blow up what's left of your business and drive people to the private couriers. It's extortion. There are laws against it.

Ahmed, you just can't do this, son.

According to one of Fahour's spokesdrones the plan to charge people to collect their own parcels is an exciting enhancement of the Post Office's customer service offerings, but this is such obvious bullshit that if Australia Post is subject to the Trade Practices Act it should be prosecuted for deceptive and misleading conduct; right after the organised crime squad have done them like a dinner for kidnapping your parcels and holding them ransom.

Fahour's "introductory offering" to his new "pick up" service will top out at $9 a parcel, if you miss the postie because you're at work or you simply don't hear them as they tippie-toe up the steps to knock ever so lightly on the door before running like crazy for the van, yelling at the getaway driver to put the pedal to the metal.

But you can expect the price to grow very quickly.

Eventually they won't even bother pretending to deliver. You'll just get a phone call from a heavy breather late at night. "JB, we got a little package here for you, brother. Looks fragile. Be a shame if anything happened to it."

The people who'll suffer the first blow, as ever, are the frontline staff. Fahour and his well-paid executives won't have to answer to angry customers who've just been told they have to pay for a package they know the sender already paid for. The poor mugs on the front desk, however, will have to cop the rage of the poor mugs who've been forced to front up at the Two Dollar Shop and hand over nine dollars for something they didn't even buy in the first place – a simple parcel delivery.