Amazing delivery

[Big Shed]

From the ABC News story

"Mail that's sent is sent by corporations and governments, that's 97 per cent of the volume," Mr Fahour observed.
it won't be too long before most of this volume will likely disappear -- replaced by email -- regardless of what AusPost does with the price.

it's the people who post the remaining 3% of current mail who will need to pay for the service into the future.
And how many of the 3% are pensioners who already get a discount?

Pensioners don't really get a discount as such, they can buy 50 stamps per year at 60c rather than 70c.

Where the biggest discounts are applied is to those corporations and government departments. Perhaps they should look at their pricing in the 97% area, rather than the 3% area?

[Vernonv]

I also don't see why AusPost makes this distinction between the letter business and the parcel business. After all a lot of the handling involved in both is the same for letters and parcels, so there must be some clever distinctions being drawn between the two to enable them to make a "loss" on one and a "profit" on the other.

Very simple ... the cost to the consumer. To post a letter from A to B costs $0.70, but say a 500g stachel posted from A to B costs $8.50. AP are forced to keep the letter postage cost low, but have free rein when it comes to parcels. None of the other players have such restrictions in place.

Not sure there is any political manoeuvring going on ... it is simply an unfair/unlevel playing field, biased towards those who are not forced to maintain an unprofitable service.

[ian]

Coming full circle back to AusPost subsidising deliveries from overseas, particularly China.

IMHO they would be better off addressing that imbalance rather than trying to make their letter delivery business profitable, it is a downward spiral.

Why should the Australian taxpayer (yes we still own AusPost) subsidise Chinese businesses selling cheap widgets on Ebay with "free" postage?

good luck with negotiating this one. You pay the Chinese exporter $6.40 for the item plus postage and when it arrives, AusPost charges you $20 to deliver it.

I'm going to duck

I also don't see why AusPost makes this distinction between the letter business and the parcel business. After all a lot of the handling involved in both is the same for letters and parcels, so there must be some clever distinctions being drawn between the two to enable them to make a "loss" on one and a "profit" on the other.
There is some very political manoeuvring going on here.

Nope. there's a world of difference between the letter and parcel businesses.

the 97% of mail originating from corporations and the government is typically processed by a specialist company.
for example your bank sends the details for your monthly credit card bill to a mailing house who prints the bill, folds it, places it in an envelope, and sorts the envelopes into bundles containing just those bills your postie needs for your street.
For doing all this work for AusPost the mailing house gets a substantial discount compared to mail placed in a road side letter box.

the processing works because every Australian mail address has a bar code -- it's the orange bars you can see on some letters.

[Big Shed]

Hmm, maybe I am not the only one under-whelmed by Mr Fahour?

Note his salary as compared to the same person at US Post, something like 10x more?

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/02/25/australia-post-boss-ahmed-fahour-keep-job/

[lesmeyer]

Poor thing Mr. Fahour only earning 4.8mil a year. When I was at NAB he was #2 and earned 15mil a year (he earned more than #1 because he was "worth it" and was specifically head hunted from Citi Group we were told). What a step down
Les

[Bob38S]

Poor thing Mr. Fahour only earning 4.8mil a year. When I was at NAB he was #2 and earned 15mil a year (he earned more than #1 because he was "worth it" and was specifically head hunted from Citi Group we were told). What a step down
Les

I don't really believe that anyone is "worth it" when we are talking those sorts of numbers.

What do these people actually do?

Apart from from cutting some "fat" which probably could have stayed except for their obscene payments or making lame excuses as to why the company isn't performing and why it is not their fault - what do they actually do or contribute?

I do agree with paying a premium for quality eg cream on the milk, but when they start talking those figures it becomes obscene and should be considered the scum on the slops. Then, quite often, even an underperforming so called Captain of Industry gets an enormous bonus or performance benefit when clearly they should be given the boot.

Ceo's, Exec's, Admin's, are the ones we have, they all seem to be drawn from the same cesspool, the best we can get? - I don't think so. I Think we can do better than the "ringins" we have.

[Chris Parks]

A similar arrangement applies with international phone calls -- it's much cheaper to ring AUS from the US than the other way round.

I get international call rates via Telstra of 2c a minute which in my experience is way cheaper than US to Oz.

The internal postage movements in Oz are no mystery and I have explained them here before. Your international stuff is air freight and the internal stuff is road freight. You can fly China to Sydney in roughly the same time it takes to drive Sydney to Brisbane so it doesn't take a genius to work out that these days international air freight is just as quick or quicker than moving stuff internally in Oz via road freight. Back in the old days it was sea freight for all international parcels, them was the days of get it when it arrives. if posting in Oz you always have the option of sending it express which is always air freight but extend your credit card limit before you do.

[brontehls]

I deal with two suppliers in Sydney

With one I order on a Sunday night or Monday morning - the courier picks up Tuesday and turns up on Thursday morning $19.00 a box (they got confused once between Queensland and Queanbeyan and the boxes did a grand tour and the depot manager delivered them personally on a Saturday

With the other supplier - large light bags of cushion inserts we tried twice - the first time was successful and reasonably priced. For the second delivery they changed their policy from actual weight to weight by volume and the shipping cost jumped by 375% - I am driving down to pick up the next order - Australia Post has lost another customer

Other companies seem to be able to do this well - I ordered two 12kg bags of dogfood from a large chain just before lunch on Monday this week - delivery was $14.71 which I thought was reasonable as they were over $50 cheaper than anyone else, they had stock now etc. I e-mailed however to point out that I felt that Queanbeyan should count for the metropolitan Canberra discounted delivery (I assume that the delivery price is calculated on the postcode 2620 which covers a pretty large rural area as well).

Very prompt reply to tell me that they had referred problem to their managemnt and to the support people - had identified my order and were refunding the difference to my visa account

Dog food arrived 0830 Tuesday (coincidentally from the same courier who services my supplier in Sydney) and the refund was in my account this morning

Some companies seem to be able to do it well

Neil

[Chris Parks]

Do you expect a large light shipment to be charged at weight instead of volume? No one does that as far as I know. When I was the Clearvue distributor a cyclone body which weighs about 15KG was always shipped by volume at 98KG or thereabouts by TOLL. The fact that it happened once was a fluke and you were very lucky. Try another company such as TOLL and see how much it costs with them, you may be surprised.

[Vernonv]

... you may be surprised.

And I doubt it will be a pleasant surprise.

[Handyjack]

I ordered a tool from Ideal Tools on a Wednesday for a job on the weekend. I required delivery by Friday.
The original courier (subsidiary of AP) picked up package on Thursday morning, but on Friday morning they had trouble delivering to a public hospital - could not follow directions or ring contact number. I saw a van of theirs on the site in the afternoon so at least one of their drivers can find the site.
Anthony of Ideal Tools resent the order with another courier who contacted me just before 4 (I had just left the site) but was happy to deliver it to my home and rang to let me know when it had been dropped off safely.

Some can deliver, some can't. Some go the extra effort and communicate, some don't.

Thank you to Anthony for making sure I had the order for the weekend.

[Handyjack]

This afternoon at work, which courier company (subsidiary of AP) delivered a package which I signed for? Package did not have a building number or gate number on it either.

Some drivers can find locations - some can't.

[Vernonv]

The road I live on is over 30km long and letters addressed with just our name and no street number never fail to get delivered.

[Enfield Guy]

I ordered 2 x 5/16 brad point drill bits from Veritas in Canada last wednesday evening. They arrived at my door in Brisbane yesterday before midday.

In contrast. A package I shipped to Melbourne last Tuesday morning has yet to arrive at it's destination and unsurprisingly, the customer is concerned.

Go figure!!

Cheers
Bevan

[AlexS]

I ordered 2 x 5/16 brad point drill bits from Veritas in Canada last wednesday evening. They arrived at my door in Brisbane yesterday before midday.

Cheers
Bevan

This is typical Lee Valley Veritas service. I've just had similar with some box locks I ordered - arrived in less than a week.