Australia Post "misdirects" 40,000 parcels a day!

"New parcel sorting machines at Australia Post are causing havoc
across the country's mail network, with an estimated 40,000 parcels
misdirected every day."

Full article here......

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-23/australia-posts-sorting-machines-misdirecting-mail/6417106

 

http://forums.silverstackers.com/message-796845.html#p796845

 

Great! Its been posted already!
I saw this the other week and only remembered to post it now.
Good info travels fast!

 

Better having it as its own thread with that attention grabbing headline. 40,000 a day... Beyond belief.

 

It's ridiculous, and almost as ridiculous as AusPost's comment on the issue: "No 'systemic issues' says Australia Post"

 

Repeating my comment from the other thread:

What a clusterf#ck.

Five different add-on IT systems. No wonder it doesn't work well. And I bet the managers involved are having a collective wank and patting each other on the back. Big projects like this are difficult but from my experience with many of those who aspire to management in Australia, massive cost, failure and bullshit excuses are the norm.

 

As profits and service standards have plummeted the Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour has increased his bonuses and salary year by year!

 

I've never had a single parcel lost or not arrived in the hundreds of parcels I have sent (not PM related). Austpost has proven much much more reliable than third parties like startrack that have regularly lost parcels.

 

Good point Startrack got bought by Australia Post last year I believe.

 

Doesn't change the facts.

 

Agree they are fast!
They've lost many parcels for us though, sometimes they have disappeared never to be seen again!
Their "investigators" also consistently fail to call you back.
Have stopped using them a few months back.

I am yet to get a missing parcel from Austpost. And if you want express delivery, they have that (pricy) option too.

I guess my point was, I see everyone complain about Austpost, but I am yet to have a parcel go missing on me, and that's with sending hundreds of them. I have been very unimpressed with the alternative (which in our case was startrack). Sure Austpost has sometimes incurred delays and the local post office have sometimes been d!cks but at the end of the day we have always gotten out stuff and what we've sent has always been received. Touch wood hey

 

Recently I found AusPost to be very good with a callback when something went astray.

 

I had a $400 return item go missing.

As it was a return and was free post they wouldn't give me any receipt so there was no way to prove I had actually posted it.

When it went missing they didn't really try to find it, twice closing the case without following up with me before hand. I knew the day it was posted, the post office I used and as it had a return code, someone must have received an invoice for the costs. Even so, they couldn't give me any proof that I had posted it or even that it had been posted.

A year later and the company has kindly agreed to refund the money, it may very well have gone missing from their warehouse but we really weren't impressed with the whole set up.

 

I wonder if it would be possible to cheaply mass produce some sort of tiny (reusable & rechargable) GPS tracker that could be integrated into parcel packaging? Combine it with some sort of anti-tamper alert technology and, if every parcel had one by default, it would not only allow us to know the whereabouts of a parcel, but it would disincentivise theft.

Maybe a private delivery company could use something like that to differentiate themselves. As long as it could be done with minimal cost.

 

Exists already for higher value shipments and often comes combined with an integrated RFID tag for packages going through scanning points.

Doing it cheap would be a challenge, but certainly not impossible if its built for re-use...so long as you can work out how to stop the batteries exploding and burning a hole in the aircraft.

 

I currently have $3500.00 worth of parcels from Germany lost in Australia Post's Black Hole of Incompetence. From now on I will not buy from any supplier that uses the post system. I am currently looking at other options for our outgoing parcels, Australia Post is becoming too third world to trust with parcels. Express Post is a hoax. That rarely arrive next day Even within the network.

 

Was looking into The Tile as I never feel comfortable sending $1k+ packages anywhere. Never had a problem but for $17.50 (if you buy 4), think it would be worth buying a few. Send it in a SAE and the receiver simply posts it back once delivery has been made. Range is only 30m but could be useful if tracking shows the PO is last place it was seen.

https://www.thetileapp.com/how-it-works