|
Gah, Couriers and Aus post. Bane of my life the lot of them.
Recent international parcel, 36 hours to cross the continental US more or less from coast to coast and then to Aus to be handed off to Auspost in Melbourne. Then a further 72 hours for delivery by Aus post from the Sunshine mail center to Kilmore (About 80KM)
Item from Queensland to Kilmore via parcel post, eight days, utterly useless tracking.
Item from a different part of Queensland to Kilmore, 9 days, tracking as good as they one above.
Item from Sydney to Kilmore, ten days, a tracking number was provided but it never updated from "Started"
Item from Campbellfield to Kilmore (45KM) seven days.
TNT usually deliver to our house, Star Track just take it to the post office with "Unable to deliver, handed off to Aus Post" as the tracking note, despite that they drive past out front gate to take it to the post office. Star Track are not actually part of the post office as mentioned above, Aus post sold them their fleet and have a wet lease back arrangement or similar, painting the damn trucks blue did not improve the service.
Aus post had a chance to make themselves the goto supplier for international freight from the US and maybe others to capitalise on the ebay explosion. They certainly missed that boat. I used their US shipto service once (Where they provide a US address for shipping to bypass sales restrictions) and it was the slowest and most expensive international shipping I have ever had. They mention on their website that they may repack items in order to reduce package size and freight charges. They repacked mine (A reducer/flattener) in it's original box, inside another bigger box, surrounded by flowpack media and charged me extra!
|