Australia Post have just ONE core purpose in life - TO DELIVER MAIL.

As speedily and cost efficiently as possible. Very simple mission statement. They have recorded a massive FAIL score in the past year or two on both accounts.

As a business that sends and receives a heap of mail, I am here to advise that Australia Post has totally lost the plot - in recent months in particular. Every mailing is now some kind of weird lottery. It gets very depressing, and it is getting WORSE.

Letters and parcels are taking SIX weeks to arrive domestically. Things I mail even to the next suburb from me are going to WA and QLD, and the PO of course is not accountable. They just yawn, and crank up the rates even more, and hand out bigger than ever obscene bonuses.

No compensation is paid to users for these self-inflicted PO messes, and the HOURS of wasted time businesses now need each week to expend - emailing and speaking to understandably annoyed buyers, is also not compensated.

We are getting Zimbabwe Level speed and efficiency of service, but are being charged Scandinavian level fees to get it.  Things must change, and the mail users are the ones who can do that. The system is broken.

A normal letter is set to increase to $1.50 if their carpetbagger front man Mr Fahour manages to hoodwink the ACCC, as he did to then Minister for Communications Mr Turnbull, that stamps are “only” increasing to $1. They REALLY are going up to $1.50.

I am a large sender and receiver of letters and parcels domestically, and have been for my 35 years as a dealer. I am speaking below from long experience. Things have NEVER been as bad as they are now in Australia Post.

We do not see this on the TV News, or in the daily papers, as the average person is unaware of what a mess they are now in.  Please forward a link to this article to anyone in the media you can think of - tinyurl.com/SN1015 - it is NOT too late to nip this in the bud.

Ten or 20 years ago, I’d happily mail or order a carton with no tracking, and be 99.99% sure it would be there next day, to/from anywhere in a 100km radius. And only a day or so later to/from Melbourne or Brisbane or Adelaide etc.

They all arrived. Maybe one parcel a decade might go AWOL. An amazing record, and AP should be proud they ONCE did a good job. Yes it is pretty hard to lose a CARTON I agree, and so it always was. They all arrived. Mostly within a week. 

In recent years all that has charged. Sadly. A bunch of fat cats at AP, paid wages in the Bill Gates league, have dragged the service standard back to levels never seen before. And yet doubled the cost to users - and think and pray we will not notice.

Australia Post keeps hiking up parcel and International rates 2 or 3 times EACH year, I kid you not.  WAY in advance of the CPI and Inflation rate. If a private company doled out price rises on this consistent scale, the ACCC would be fining them!

Why?  As AP do NOT need any Government approval for parcel and overseas mail price hikes, and hence charge whatever juicy figure comes into their head, when they need some more money for machines that do not work, or Top Brass who do not work either.  

A large parcel by slowwww road to Darwin or WA very often costs well over $100 now, and can take a month. You can sometimes FLY there, and check the box as baggage, for less than the cost of mailing your snail mail road parcel.

I mailed a set of the Stanley Gibbons “Stamps Of The World” catalogues to New Zealand this week, and the very CHEAPEST shipping method was near $A200. Insane. You CAN fly there for less. I use superb VFU stamps on cartons, so senders do not overly care, but most senders use a worthless white label for parcels.

All these price hikes are bad enough, but some geniuses in there, drawing mega million salaries, have also now decided that humans handling parcels are not really necessary, in this Brave New Fantasy World they live in.

They found MACHINES that allegedly do it just as well, and with almost no “staff costs”. Well no wages paid, but these shiny new machines cost $A500 MILLION it is reported. They seem to have overlooked that. That is a lot of wage hours of once very efficient sorters.

Do these monsters work?  NO. I often have Registered parcels across Sydney taking up to 2 or 3 weeks. I am not kidding. They get to the massive Chullora Mail Centre, and then sit there for a week, or two weeks at times. How do I know this?  As I send nearly everything tracked mail.

The Post Office’s own tracking data shows me that my box often arrives at Chullora on October 1, and does not emerge for a week or two. It is like a bad Monty Python script, but is happening more and more. A parcel post “Black Hole”.

The Fats Cats appear to have decided all capital cities will “centralise” parcel mail - a disaster in practice of course, but a genius move on the whiteboard in the Boardroom. Time to have another cigar and Port and celebrate “Genius Mail Management 2015”.

The online parcel tracking shown nearby, sent to a stamp dealer only a few miles away from me in Sydney, is a typical example as you can clearly see, and it is very common these days - very sadly. Almost normal. 

I mailed a small box on September 19 to a stampboards member here in Sydney.  He is in French's Forest ... just a few kms away, basically a nearby suburb.  A 5 minute drive. The address and postcode was VERY clearly written - he emailed me a photo of it. 

He did not get it after a week or so.  Only $65 of albums, so not sent registered, hence zero compensation payable to either of us, had it vanished entirely. Annoying, but it WAS to a street address which are riskier and riskier to use.

I assumed it had been stolen from his street address, when he was not home.  We both wasted much time on email over this. You are helpless, as these pieces just vanish into a huge faceless AP Black Hole.

TEN days later it shows up via the free on-line parcel tracking as now being in Welshpool, Perth, Western Australia.  A WEEK after that, it ends up with my client in French’s Forest.  Road mail across the continent both ways, for NO reason.

So what used to be delivered next working day, is often now taking 3 weeks, and wasting a TON of his time, and my time.  And raised blood pressure all round.  I need to be apologising for these clowns at AP endless times EVERY week.

Box turns up THREE weeks later after a journey to Perth ….. 8,000 Kms, or 80 HOURS of road transport, for a carton clearly addressed to a nearby suburb to me, at HUGE real cost to them and the environment.

Had I PAID for WA shipping for a box this size the cost would be $40 each way = $80.  Money AP have cost themselves of course due to incompetence.  I highlighted one case recently that crossed the Nullabor 5 times.  The item got smashed, and PO refused compensation.

And these geniuses at Australia Post wonder WHY they lose money?  So to cover their own shortcomings, they crank up rates to customers to cover THEIR defective sorting machinery AND give themselves millions in bonuses as well.  It is like a bad movie script.

Last week I mailed a box to a client in Wollongong .. a short drive south of Sydney. Posted on Wednesday am and client drove to his PO in heavy traffic Friday afternoon to collect it before the long weekend.  Looked at the tracking, and THAT box was in Queensland. Insane.

Sometimes things just vanish for 6 weeks with nothing to show buyer or seller what is going on. They are the worst ones. Totally vanished from sight.  Pay $4 for Registered Fee and get near zero service.

I mailed a standard size business envelope on August 27 to a PO Box in Kingston, Hobart. The letter was cancelled front and back at Castlecrag on August 27.  It was clearly marked “Registered” and SHOULD have been scanned all along the trip. Address was neat and clear and correct. 

Backflap and sides were taped down with wide cellotape, as I generally do with Registered letters, and red Pentel pen signed over the tape, and ask they be back-stamped too when staff are not busy.  So as secure as a $550 order can be. 

Weeks later, client had not received it.  It contained $550 of a set of Nauru “Seahorse” stamps he purchased, and he understandably was getting anxious. I gave him my usual advice - “The PO folks are pretty hopeless lately, but it WILL turn up. Relax!”

He had opted NOT to insure it, so had the item not turned up, his MAXIMUM pay out would be the PO figure of $100 which has literally been unchanged for FIFTY years - from before decimal currency even, despite the “Registered Fee” increasing near 20 fold in that time from 20¢ to $3.70.

Collectors are funny with “All Risk” Insurance.  $10 would have fully covered this for the full $550 if lost, and buyer would not have fussed. AFTER something goes wrong, it is always MY problem oddly!  Despite me clearly setting this out on my order page -

Only YOU know if your street address is secure - a large packet covered in pretty stamps left outside, just might tempt passers-by? Only YOU know that, I do not. Mail contractors these days are often lazy, and leave packets on top of mailboxes etc in view of public, and out in wet weather etc. PO Boxes are FAR safer.

"All Risk" Insurance is always possible if required as well, at $A2 per $100 covered - again it must be specified on order form. It is like Travel Insurance - decline that when booking your ticket, and THEN tell Qantas you really meant to take it 3 weeks back, and you now need to cancel your ticket for no penalty, and see how you go with THAT one!

After 5 weeks and some aggro from buyer, I phoned AP call centre about it – “no, we have no record, apart from being lodged”.  I phoned the Kingston (Hobart) LPO about it (getting a real phone number for a PO took me a half hour) “No, we have just checked, and it is not sitting here Sir.”

Letter oddly turned up BACK in my PO Box a few days after my calls.  SIX WEEKS LATER, with no transit postmarks, or tracking events other than the one upon lodging it in August.  As you can see on the close up nearby, the stamp has a (Leightonfield Mail Centre) “SWLF AUG 27” ink jet cancel.

The reverse had the orange sorting spray jet bars, top and base. My hunch is some idiot and/or machine in AP has decided the sticker sender address on reverse is the RECIPIENT, and after 6 weeks, sent it back to NSW, 2068.  WHY that took 6 weeks, who knows?

WHERE the envelope was between August 27 and October 8 - SIX weeks - I will probably never know.  The PO cannot tell me, there is no apology, no explanation, and no compensation.  Pay these guys $3.70 + 70¢ for Registered, and the piece often enters the Twilight Zone.  And comes back to you.

I asked the client if he wanted me to re-send stamps again, and he said they “appeared jinxed” and could I please refund him the $550.  So end result - a most annoyed client, loss of HOURS of my time chasing it all up and emailing, a loss of a $550 sale to me, all directly caused by a PO who does not CARE.     

Registered letters seem to be getting more and more affected. I mailed another client a similar small standard envelope October 1, containing $2,500 in 2 sets of stamps he had bought. The pair shown above cost him $2,200 -  if anyone sees them offered for sale, let me know!

As this is typed October 18, zero sign of the envelope on PO tracking website since my lodging it.  Nothing, NADA.  Just totally vanished, like the one to Kingston Tasmania. To a Melbourne suburb ONCE, this would have taken 2 days, in 99% of cases, to arrive. 

The Registered number is 499734702012 if readers want to play my usual waiting game, and check the AP on-line tracking.  As you can see in image below, it has been in a PO Black Hole “somewhere” for 2½ weeks so far.

PO mail van drivers that collect parcels at my Castlecrag PO take them to the massive St. Leonards Mail Centre. ONCE, when things were efficiently run, they’d sort them there, into huge parcel bins for applicable regions, and next day they’d arrive in most instances.

I arranged a stamp dealer official guided visit there one evening, by the Duty Manager, and it was a hive of activity.  HUNDREDS of staff, forklifts and huge bins zipping about, and giant machines, and a hub of efficiency, and staff working all night.  

NOW the red vans all arrive at St Leonards Mail Centre from a host of POs in early evening, and the contents of their vans are then loaded (and not too rapidly) into big steel cages, and trucked in large Semis way across town to Chullora - often to vanish for a week. The Bermuda Triangle.

This is called “Progress” I think, when top staff are paid millions a year to engineer such wonderful “steps forward” from the comfort of the Boardroom. Delivering mail fast and efficiently is far too uncool in 2015 to all these MBA’s. 

The Geniuses spent $500 million on machines from Holland, bolted on 5 different after-market software systems that were not all compatible, and proceeded to decimate the once working efficiently Australian Parcel Post system.

If I mail a parcel at Castlecrag PO to Kevin Duffy, also living in Castlecrag, it goes to St Leonards Mail Centre, THEN right across the Sydney metro area to Chullora. Then it all comes back here sometime in the next week or two.  Maybe.

On the AP website there is a video of parcel mail zipping around a huge centre, in huge clear Perspex type tubes with conveyor belts in them. All with laser beam type scanners shooting beams onto all sides, searching for the tracking labels, and the postcode. Not a human in sight.

Once that scanning is secured, the parcels allegedly are all sorted and sent on their way. And a box addressed to “2068” will go to ANY other 4 numeral destination the laser beams might ‘see’ first on a box. My sender PO Box 4007 address sticker might get read as to Hamilton QLD, even if real address was 5047 Adelaide.  

Humans are smarter than machines. So a parcel marked “Dandenong Vic 3175” does not get sent to Western Australia by humans. Not even once usually, and certainly not repeatedly. Machines do not care. They do not have a BRAIN.

“ABC News” reported that fully 20% of the nation’s parcels are being screwed up by these brilliant new White Elephant machines - tinyurl.com/Nullabor - that is about 40,000 parcels a day being messed up they claim.

“The machines, which Australia Post has described as "state-of-the-art", cannot read some barcodes and sometimes confuse a parcel's "to" and "from" addresses. Australia Post declined to be interviewed” ABC News website reported.

“Staff and casuals are doing so much overtime (to fix the mess) they are referring to the new sorting systems as "mortgage machines" because they use the extra income to pay off their debts.

Ms Doyle said the machines were manufactured in the Netherlands and constructed in Australia, but rely on five different add-on IT systems, which do not function well together” ABC concluded.

This kind of madness is now occurring regularly sadly. I reported this case earlier and it bears repeating. Witness the beautiful old sepia photos nearby of Sir Donald Bradman, signed at left of batting pad knee roll. In the frame, and out of the frame.

It was purchased earlier this year by Melbourne cricket collector Noel Almeida for $A395. If the signature was expert verified, it would be worth more like $1,500 Noel advises me, which does not surprise me one bit, the way top end cricket stuff sells. 

The signed and framed photo was securely packed and mailed correctly from WA to Sunshine Vic, by Registered Post.  Delivery times in days of old, when CEOs were not paid $A4½ million a year, and when humans sorted parcel mail, was generally a few days later.  

The parcel went back and forth the 3,400 Kms across this vast country FIVE times. 175 HOURS of highway driving. It finally arrived with Noel - nearly one MONTH later. Actual COST to AP - some $100s probably.

No fault of the sender or Almeida - just these alleged “high tech” $500 Million sorting machines, deciding themselves on arrival at each end, it needed to go back right across the country once again. FIVE times. They confused sender postcode with addressee, when they laser beam the parcels.

This is about 17,000 Kms of travel - near all of it totally needlessly. That is Sydney to New York distance.  And you guessed it - all this stupid yo-yoing not only wasted time and resources, and annoyed the buyer, it ensured the glass in the frame broke, and the sharp shards sliced and destroyed the signed photo.

The heartbreak a true Cricket devotee collector like Noel clearly had, upon seeing this mess after waiting a month for it to finally arrive, you cannot begin to place a monetary value upon. It is incompetence on a Grand scale, and AP do NOT care.

So in such a case you’d imagine the PO would apologise, and stump up the $395 cost price of the item they ruined - possibly the $1,500 retail value of it - right?  The parcel was Registered of course. Their own tracking shows the month delay, and bizarre national transit yo-yo.

No such chance. The Post Office response was that the glass cracked, as it was not packed correctly, and ZERO compensation was forthcoming from them!  I am a fastidious packer as clients know, and use fibreglass filament tape, and the best packing material I can source.

But no-one packs for 175 hours of road transit over 17,000 Kms, via a dozen mail centres. No domestic sender takes that much care - as in the real world of mail order, you should not have to!  All detail here on above - tinyurl.com/Nullabor

Sadly $100 maximum is all the PO usually stump up, for a lost or damaged Registered item. IF they agree it was in fact lost or damaged by them, and that takes some proving often, as we can see from their response to the Bradman smashed frame.   

AFTER you compete long forms, and wait a while for the claim to grind through their often slow system. Which in this case is quite absurd. For overseas mail that can take very many months.

A Registered label today cost $3.70, and a first class letter stamp costs 70¢, (to be hiked up to $1.50 soon it seems) so a Registered first class letter will then be $3.70 plus $1.50 = $5.20 - maybe more, if the Registered Fee increases too, as it has several times a year under Mr Fahour’s AP Regime. 

The Federal Government approved in principle earlier this year a price increase soon for standard letters to $1 from the current 70c, and a faster "First Class" service (i.e. exactly same speed as present it seems) for $1.50.

It was another official Abbott Government hasty decision, made with no consultation whatever with those it will most impact, it seems very clear, and hopefully it can be overturned like their last 50 bad decisions were.

For those who suspect this will not bother them: "I have lots of old stamps or Concession stamps I can use up" you of course are not thinking too laterally, or very deeply, as I will show here.

The headline cost of a 70c letter going to $1 for “Second Class” delivery service (2 days slower than now) is only the tip of the iceberg, as $1.50 will be the chosen option for many - more than DOUBLING.

What the clever AP Press Releases omit to tell us is, that heaps of other mail prices AUTOMATICALLY increase to very major amounts, when the “standard” letter rate goes up.

"Large Letters" are the slippery slope here - things not regarded as parcels, but are "large letters” - i.e. not standard size small letter items. Items like your A4 type stamp club journals, and magazines, and mailed brochures, and so on, that we ALL receive all year.