Rumor a few months back was AP was to deliver 6 days p/w. My local post office has confirm that by 2014 Australia Post will be delivering 6 days a week. This includes parcels and letters. My postie as well has said to receive a newsletter stating this.
Good for online buyers, bad for sellers. An extra day will probably see a price increase of postage prices, again. This online shopping demand it's literally overwhelming the system that they cannot cope with two days off.
Your thoughts?
Auspost need to raise their game in many areas. Delivering 6 days a weeks is just one. They also need to deliver next day to any metro area. Too often what we get is second or third class service with post only turning up when they feel like it, failure to deliver, and the feeling that they think they are doing you a favour, rather than providing a customer service.
As for prices, they are already too high on the parcel side and need to come down. The joke is you often get a better, faster, cheaper service sending things from Hong Kong rather than the town down the road.
It's an endemic, management level failure - a failure of customer focus and ludicrous expectations. The government needs to put in there a customer champion with the power to bang heads together and sack incompetence.
They already do next day delivery in metro areas, they have express, or in same city/interstate major metro is O/N
You want gold class service but not pay for it? those cheap parcels is one of the reasons why the prices have increased, those 99c parcels cost post big money every year to deliver, and as part of the UPU they do it for free (ie no charge to the senders country)
This is because aus post have no competition so the bastards do as they please
There is only federal protection laws for mail only, for Parcels its free game to anyone, hence why there is a plethora of couriers available to anyone.
Mine already delivers on Saturdays, I thought it was norm.
Never have I received them on a Saturday unless it's a long weekend or Christmas. Bazaar. .
It's bizarre.
Maybe he was talking about a Christmas bazaar?
how bazaar
Same i received a couple of my parcels from saturdays…
But i think it was just personal preference of the courier to make the weekdays delivery less by delivering it on the weekend…
yes i recieved a couple of parcels on easter monday this year despite the fact that they were booked out of the mail center as with driver on the day i suspect they were sitting in his van all weekend
I agree with OP, it will leads to price increase.
Last year they increase the price twice for the safchel.
Honestly, not happy with this..
It would be a trade off between net cost and efficiency.
Adding Friday night processing and Saturday morning deliveries would mean there is no need to collect and process on Sunday. I expect this would result in cheaper rates and happier workers.
It would also remove the current glut of Monday morning deliveries, presumably resulting in greater efficiency, fewer delays snowballing through the week, greater on time delivery performance, and a more consistent (and therefore cheaper) labour requirement through the week.
As far as I am aware, most parcels are now delivered by AP Contractors, not AP employed Postmen.
Contractors can work whatever hours they like. Mind you, most are paid a pittance for each parcel they deliver. Every time the contracts are renewed AP screws the prices down lower and lower. Can't see how any contractor makes a profit now.
I very much doubt AP would send the postmen out on Saturdays as the additional wages cost would be horrendous. That was the reason for curtailing Saturday mail deliveries around 40 years ago.
I am sure you cant see the value of this, but keep in mind the OP did say it includes letters.
Although its interesting that the US is now considering stopping saturday deliveries…
fyi. mail contractors cannot work whatever hours they want. ap parcel delivery procedure allows the mail contractors to attempt delivery mon-fri between 0700-1700 for residential addressees and 0900-1700 for business addressees. there is a cut-off time on their scanner. that means that they will fail if they attempt delivery after the cut-off time.
I already get parcels delivered by Australia Post Mon-Saturday
Mine already delivers on Saturdays, I thought it was norm
While Australia Post themselves don't (currently) deliver on Saturdays, the courier companies they contract out to sometimes do.
Yes, although we, as others, can receive parcels (contractors) on a Saturday, I should mention we do not receive any letters on a Friday, quite often more than usual on a Monday. This has been happening for years now, but is no bother as most important mail is per emails these days. Nothing stops those junk mail deliverers though; excessive amounts every week-end. Those poor trees.
I can tell you now that your LPO is full of crap.
The only time they are legally permitted to deliver on Saturdays is from November to the 2nd of January. This has been in place for over a decade and both unions (TWU and CEPU) will NOT shift from this position.
What happens on the weekend is very similar to a rubberband effect. All the interstate is caught up and is set for delivery on Monday/Tuesday, its because of how Linehaul runs and how they spread it out over the weekend to save using contractors.
As for contractors delivering on a Saturday, the only way they can be doing this is holding product over from Friday since all Mail and Parcel Delivery centers are shut on Saturdays (however major centers such as Chullora etc are open but do not allow parcel delivery contractors onsite)
You should be reporting them immediately since Post has a clear vehicle policy and its against the rules to hold product outside of Australia Posts centers.
carryovers are allowed as long the principal contractor reports the articles and the reason for the carryover to the pdc.
I reckon the true need for Saturday deliveries will always depend substantially on the number of Ozbargainers living in a given delivery area…
only time I ever received stuff on a Saturday was Christmas Eve in 2011. Kind of makes sense to add the extra day given how much stuff they have to deliver
Lol. Of recent, the postman comes at 10 am on Saturday mornings.
Not a knock or a voice… but we often find the "we missed you" card in the mailbox.
…Thank you, AusPost for your service!
Woohoo, 6 days a week carding. :)
I've got into the habit of checking the letter box on Saturdays as I often receive parcels then. Neighbours probably think I'm a degenerate.
As to what I think about the change from 5 days to 6 days, it's a bandaid fix. Bottom line is they need more posties to handle the mail.
And while they're at it they need more cashiers in the PO themselves, one of my local PO frequently has lines out the door while only half the terminals are open!
Exactly This^^^
I can confirm that I regularly receive parcel deliveries on saturdays but our local parcel contractor is a bit dodgey so it doesn't surprise me.
As a former postie I very much wonder how the hell they are going to manage to do letter deliveries on saturdays. Our delivery centre was understaffed and overworked the entire time I was there and I believe the issue wasn't isolated to just us. The issue was recruiting people who wanted to be a postie that also had a motorcycle licence.
It's pretty shitty pay for waking up extremely early and then tolerating the heat of summer and the cold/wet of winter. Don't get me wrong it was an awesome job but the pay was rubbish.
how much for bikie?
Well a postie sorts all their own mail - you spend about 1/3 of your time in the delivery centre sorting mail and 2/3s (can be half half even) back when I did it which was about 5 years ago it was around $18 an hour. Good news is that what you are rostered on for you are paid for (unless you run over) which means if you do your round quicker you still get paid for what you were rostered for.
I see it as a progress and welcome it. Good on Australia Post
Saturday delivery will be much better, but I expect prices for an already expensive and slow service, will increase. It's already cheaper to get parcels delivered from overseas than it is to post locally and overseas parcels arrive within 5 days, where-as interstate can take that long, it's also extortionate to post parcels to overseas destinations. It seems Auspost are really against local businesses and would prefer we all purchase from overseas.
We live in a suburb 5klms from a small town with ribbon development between our district and the town itself. Normal AP deliveries by motorcycle ends midway between our district and the CBD, so it's a mail contractor delivering letters only by car. Any parcels or registered items are left at the sorting office for the householder to collect themselves and the contractor leaves a notice slip in the mailbox. The Post Office only opens mon-fri. The local area has over a thousand people and a relatively new development, yet there's no letter box even though we have a state primary school and the collection van drives straight past to empty a box outside a village store 10klms further up the road. We campaigned for a box as the nearest is 3k's away, but AP HQ deemed one unnecessary. In view of their stinginess, it's quite hard to get one's head around increased services with associated costs. Stranger things have happened at sea, but I'm sceptical.
I have been getting stuff delivered on Saturdays for about a two years (Metro Adelaide), I guess it depends on the contractor, maybe he takes Friday off or something.
the avalanche of online purchases didn't happen overnight, it's been steadily increasing for years so i'm surprised it took them this long to make the decision, and also because i thought AP's reaction/answer to the increased workload was opening more postal collection centers, or maybe they just underestimated demand?
ps anyone remember Sunday deliveries? only 2 or 3 weekends in December, did they get paid overtime or what?
Contractors get paid per parcel, around the 1 dollar mark per unit. For Post everything is about cost vs outcome, whether the additional cost of having PDC workers there of a weekend (so Overtime @ double dollars) and you need at least 2 people there at all times.
For the mostpart the big centers (Chullora/Strathfield, Underwood etc etc) run 24/7 and never shut the doors, same with Transport/Linehaul, alot of product movement and processing happens on a weekend.
Auspost should focus more on their parcel pickup centres, which they have been trialling.
Customers can come pick it up when they want 24/7 and Austpost don't have to pay delivery trucks and fuel = Cheaper postage?
I can hardly wait to receive "sorry we missed you" cards 6 days a week instead of 5
I agree. My delivery driver goes to the point he stops out the front, looks at my door. Drives off? From my door to the road is about 8 steps, no fence dogs etc. It'll be quicker doing his job than writing a card??
I know postie's who did this with small parcels. It was known as "pre-carding", the reason usually is that the postie/delivery guy has attempted delivery to that premises unsuccessfully on many consecutive occasions that they assume everyone in the house must have a full time job / go to school. You're not supposed to do it but I can see why it might happen.
What I used to do is write cards for houses such as these before leaving for the round so I didn't have to write them in the field which can be mighty annoying. When I worked at Aus Post non-registered/non-signed for parcels were at our discretion whether we choose to leave or card. Obviously customers are always going to have a preference - some want their parcels and don't care about them potentially being stolen and some would be the opposite and you're seriously going to get complaints either way. I don't know about other centres but you could certainly phone our centre and have a whinge about your postie and if it was even slightly reasonable it would be passed on to the actual postie. I always either a bad postie or people have too much spare time…
Another interesting nugget of information is a postie can warn / withhold mail if yo don't have an auspost compliant mail box. I sure had some interesting mailboxes in my time. One was simply a rock, lift the rock, put mail under it, put rock on top…
I already get parcels delivered by Australia Post Mon-Saturday, so for me it's parcels 6 days a week.
Wouldn't be too good to see an increase in prices as they are already getting a bit costly for larger parcels, but I think 6 days a week is good.
Don't get letters, but aren't really fussed about that anyway, means can't get bills on the weekend which is nice.