Australia Post and the Missing Mail Conundrum

Australia Post can you help?

 

So whose got my mail?


This is probably puzzling some of you readers who tune in for photography behind the scenes and the latest HighRPM videos, and I promise I'll be back to normal blogging soon!

However I've gone off on a tangent today with the saga of me receiving someone else's mail for the past couple of years which has culminated into the realisation that they have also been receiving mine, it's just that I seem to be missing some!

At first thought you might agree that this is an inconvenience, especially if it happens again and again.

NOT my mail , again

Inconvenience? Yes indeed, in fact I just had to re-address another two just then. As you can see by my first official notice to Australia Post below though I have been missing mail that is costing me in late fees, and that takes away from Auki's  happy place!

After calling and being on hold for 20 minutes I decided I'd be better off putting it in writing for reference anyway, theirs and mine.


 Here's my initial contact submitted via the Australia Post online form:

I would like to lodge a formal complaint and have this complaint followed through to a resolution, as the situation we currently have with Australia Post has now eventuated with us not receiving mail, and, in some instances cause us to incur financial penalties in the form of late fees.

Over the last couple of years we have, on an intermittent but increasingly regular basis been receiving mail intended for another address, one that shares the same unit/number as ours but a DIFFERENT street address. Initially it was thought this was an excusable one off type of mistake and the letters were sent back, with hand written note, to Australia Post for re-delivery.

HOWEVER these mistakes have continued, each time with the same outcome, a hand written note on the envelope asking Australia Post to ‘please deliver to the correct address’. (For your reference the two addresses involved in this mix up are [address removed] and [address removed])

About two months ago totally by chance, a friend who happens to live in the same unit block as this address to which all these letters should have been sent to, spotted some correspondence of OURS in this other persons mailbox as she was taking out the bins. The person whos mail we have been incorrectly receiving and redirecting. It had not occurred to us before this discovery that we were also not getting mail that was addressed to us, due to the same issue. Now with the knowledge that our mail may have been going to the other on many occasions I require someone at Australia Post to rectify this.

In the past year we have received at least two late body corp final notices that have indicated we had not paid their original notice for due fees, the original notice that we never received. I paid late fees for this. At this stage I was unaware of the problem with sorting our mail and presumed I had overlooked something. In the last two months my partner underwent surgery and was specifically waiting for her medical bills to arrive, as luck would have it, the first indication of these medical bills was a letter saying that we had overlooked paying the initial bill, my partner immediately took this second notice in to the practice and explained that due to this mail problem we are having she had not received an initial notice for payment. She did not incur a late fee for this.

This also leads me to assume that perhaps our incorrectly delivered mail is not being sent on for re-delivery by the receiver? If it had not been for our friend spotting mail intended for us hanging out of this other person's mailbox we might still be ignorant of the situation.

Today I have AGAIN received two more items of correspondence to this SAME incorrect address. I have AGAIN written a note to have them redirected and have taken them both up to the local post box for Australia Post to handle. I will also now be keeping a photographic log of any further occurrence in case you need a reference as to how many times it may happen till this situation is resolved.

Points that may (or may not) be of help to your customer service people if they follow this through.


  • These incorrectly addressed items sometimes come bundled in amongst correctly addressed items all bunched together with a rubber band. The postie is delivering to the correct address according to the top letter that he can see.  
  • When we went in to the Casuarina post office to see how the problem could be addressed we were informed that we would have to take this up with the Winnellie post office as that is where the mail is sorted. Perhaps this is another alternative, but I am lodging this official complaint centrally with you to chase up in the first instance 
  • At the Casuarina post office it was suggested to resolve this that maybe we should just get a PO Box. I will not be paying for a service that I should be receiving at my home address. Possibly one to train staff not to suggest as an alternative for Australia Post issues. 

I look forwarding to hearing from someone soon regarding this.



*UPDATE Sunday 10 June 2012 

Close, but no banana, our mail at someone else's address.

Just as an update, I was sent this mobile picture from the mail box at the other address that has been receiving our mail, obviously this has been blurred out for security here but that is my address on the correspondence.

I have the original image should Australia Post require it.

I have also requested that my friend does not deliver this to me.  It is not her responsibility to perform the carriage of mail for me.