I hate the Australian Post Office (Rant)

[Paladin Anderson]

I run a home business in America. I ship hand made geeky items all over the world. In our three years of existence, we have shipped an item to most of the countries on earth.

So far we've had a few items to Europe vanish and one hat to Italy take three months to get delivered. But those have been our worst cases....

Except for Australia. Australia ALWAYS takes months to deliver the item or just blatantly loses it completely. It's to the point we're actually shocked when something arrives without a hitch.

I CRINGE when we get an order with an Australian address on it. Because I know I'm going to have yet another ticked off customer on my hands who is going to be demanding a refund when the item has yet to arrive over a month after I put it into the damn mail!

Ok. Rant over.

Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a reason for this? Is there anything I can do? I've already started sending all Australian orders a stock message explaining that we apologize in advance for something we have no control over.

 

[AusGamer44]

I don't know what to tell you,dude.I'm Australian and I order lots of stuff from overseas on Ebay and it usually reaches me in a timely manner.I've only had one parcel go missing in 7 years,an Amazon purchase that did eventually turn up a few weeks after Amazon sent the replacement.But I live in a major capital city(Brisbane,Yahtzee's current hometown) on the east coast so I'd expect to get decent mail service.Postage to rural areas further inland is more expensive and fiddly because of the huge distances to cover.Maybe most of your customers have come from these places?
(Though one Ebay customer of mine from such a place-who refused to give me a last name or proper postal address(I'm guessing he was avoiding the child support enforcers,LOL) other than(names changed here) 'Bob.Mt Bogus,Adelaide' still got his package from me with that address.(I WAS impressed,I can tell you!)
Having said that,for some reason in the last few years postage costs seem to have skyrocketed to get a package from the US.40 bucks for a toy or CD by airmail? Eeek!Never thought I'd see the day when UK post was cheaper!

Edit:The only other reasons I can think the packages go missing is 1) that tracking isn't automatically included in postal costs-if you want it,it costs extra.Either that or2) you're accidentally sending it by sea.Which takes an AGE.If you buy a magazine that was imported by airmail,it costs more than the identical issue sea freighted a few months later.I buy Dr Who Magazine with the 'airmailed express' sticker on it in the Newsagent for 17 bucks,even though I could wait 3 months for the identical issue by sea for 4 dollars less.Crazy.
Anyhoo,maybe the AP site can help.
http://auspost.com.au/index.html?cmpid=apbrand-google&mkwid=syfjWWxCv|australia%20post|e|pcrid|7260006506

I've emailed or phoned them re postage costs and they've always been pretty helpful.