A Rant About Australia Post - AGAIN

On 30 January I bought something on eBay which may or may not have been this. DON'T JUDGE ME. It was shipped to me on 31 January from Brisbane. By 7 February it hadn't arrived, which seemed kind of weird, so I had another look at the eBay purchase and noticed that the shipping had tracking. I went to the Australia Post site to check the tracking number and found that my package had supposedly been delivered on Friday 3 February and signed for by someone called D. David. I am not D. David and no D. David lives here. I assumed the seller must have accidentally sent it to the wrong person so I wrote to her, but the address she sent it to was mine. She said she would follow up with Australia Post.

I was in the post office the next day sending my mum a birthday present and picking up some customs forms for an international package I'm sending off next week (that's you, J!), and I asked about it. They told me I needed to ring the call centre. They also told me the contract delivery guy in my area was new. I said that explained a bit because lately when I have had packages delivered I've been coming home to find my gate wide open, and once I found the gate closed but the package just lying on the ground and it had obviously just been thrown over the fence. My fence and gate are quite high and not see-through, but I live in a terrace house, so it's only a couple of steps from the front door to the street. With the gate open, anyone and his dog can walk past, see a package sitting there and think, "Thanks, I'll be having that!" I also live just down the road from a strip of restaurants and cafes and several homeless shelters and homeless drop in centres, so a) it's busy during the day, and b) you never know who is lurking around.

So I asked the post office people if they would tell the guy to shut the gate. A simple enough request, one would have thought.

The next day I was working at home in the afternoon because Noodles was sick, so I happened to be there when the contractor delivered a package from Sarah (woo!). The first thing he said to me was, "Did you make a complaint about me not shutting the gate?" WTF? Attitude, much? I explained that I did ask the staff at the PO to ask him to shut the gate, and I explained why. He started giving me some spiel about how they have to drop things off in a certain time and blah blah blah. You know what, mate? I don't give a shit. If you have cause to open a gate, you shut it after. It takes SECONDS.

So then I asked about the package that hadn't shown up. He said it must have been dropped off and then someone took it (wow - maybe because the gate was left open!). I said it was supposedly signed for. He said in that case there would be a card in the letterbox. I said there would be a card in the letterbox if it was requiring a signature and there was no one home to sign for it. This package was signed for. He said, "What was in it?" Again. WTF? How is that relevant to the delivery guy? He would not have seen what was in it anyway! Then he said he knew nothing about it and he would talk to 'the guy' who delivered packages on that day. I already knew from the PO that 'the guy' was him. THAT FUCKER HAS MY DARYL.

Well, truthfully, I don't know that for sure. I do know that the previous contractor had an annoying habit of dropping packages off that were meant to have a signature on them, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if this guy did the same thing, left the gate open, and then someone walked past and grabbed it. However, I was home almost all that day, except for a couple of hours when I was at the doctor's in the morning, and I don't remember coming back and finding the gate open, so I don't think anything was delivered then. I don't know who D. David is, though the Australia Post call centre asked me if I was "sure" that someone of that name didn't live there. Pretty sure, but let me check the attic...

The seller contacted me again and said that Australia Post had 'no information' about the package, and she had to lodge a form for them to follow it up further, which would take about a week. How on earth could they have 'no information' when they know exactly when it was delivered (4:15pm apparently, when I was at home not having a package delivered) and by whom?

Damn it, Australia Post - you are not a bloody casino. We should not have to just take the chance that something may or may not get to where it's meant to be!