Australia post

[upside]

@ ballzac and anyone else this regards,,

If that happens again, I'd ask to see the signature that was used upon delivery,, there is a good chance it looks nothing like the one you use.

[mutant]

sometimes, seeds might be crushed by the stamp. These are heavy fuckers.

but yeah now I remember when I received some Hyoscyamus seed from oz, some of it was crushed...

[GoOnThen]

I was a crazy moto postie a cupl years ago. That was the best part, dicing traffic, a few snakes, one crazy German Shepard who was intent on scaring the shit outta me haha I really liked getting on the bike, especially in summer!

Apart from the mundane mail sorting and watching parcels getting tossed around and thinking, this is how they treat our stuff... It wasn't too bad lol

I did three and a half years as a postie in the late eighties. Once you got your run down and if your bike skills were good it was a cool job if it wasn't pissing with rain. You used to be able to go home once you finished your run so if you road hard you could be at the pub for a counter lunch most days if you wanted to and still get paid for the whole day.

Sorting the mail before you went out was definitely the worst part of the job followed by the tossers that the post office seemed to employ.

Cheers

Got

[upside]

Haha ^ exactly mate,, I did it for about 2-3 years.I had my run set out like a motox track. Curb hopping, a cupl of dirt berms, going hard was fun. Somedays called for a chilled ride, just putting around. Finished mostly by 1pm.

only cupl times in winter was it so wet and cold I had to stop and warm my hands up on the side covers of the motor, gloves were soaked, put a bit if warmth back into my hands then off I went again. Then the hail hit! Looking for cover under trees haha

[incognito]

I wonder what the pays like? Govt job yeah? I'm defo gonna look into being a postie!

[Sallubrious]

Abbott wants to sell Auspost. Fuck it, let's sell the cow and just buy milk forever.

So posties will most likely get shafted and have to accept pay cuts or put in tenders to try to keep their jobs.

They should rename it if they sell it - China post

[planthelper]

sorting letters is done by machines which involve rollers, and they can squash your seeds, there is no intention by aus post to cause damage...

don't blame aus post for damage, because as a fact you did not use bubble wrap.

tip:

to keep a letter thin, (bubble wrap makes the letter more expensive) pad the seeds into, the WHITE THIN STUFF, computers and other gadgets get wrapped in.

to source it, go to your next retravision store, or similar.

Edited January 26, 2014 by planthelper

[upside]

I was employed by a contractor for Aust post, so my wages were based on a casual rate. Quite a few of the parcel delivery positions are contracts, and the word was alot more were going that way. PH is correct, it's really up to the sender to take care with seeds if posted,, bags of mail get piled on top of other bags, go thru machines, then Posties sort them into their run and bundle them up quite tightly etc

another thing to take care with is waterproofing them in a Ziploc possibly.

[Cimi]

No, but my postman seems intent on destroying my spore prints by leaving them out in the rain.

Just gotta make sure they are in plastic zip loc bags!

Edited February 1, 2014 by Cimi

[Ethnopiate]

I have even found bubble wrap to be non-idiot-proof. Bubbles pop, shit gets crushed. I send seeds in a small zip lock baggie. Pack it half full of cotton so its pretty solid in the baggie, then in with the seeds, then pack to the hilt with more cotton wool. I am 6'3" and about 90kg and have stood on a baggie packed like that with no damage to the fragile nasturtium seeds inside. Never had a problem with that method. Hell, double up and wrap that baggie in bubble wrap too! I bet PO workers mail arrives in top nick. To Oz Post with love...

[Distracted]

My postie has ridden up my driveway to leave the last three books i've bought under cover so they don't get wet.

I want to leave him a beer or something, what a champion!

My last house the postie would knock on the door to personally hand me the games i was buying at the time from ebay to ensure they're not stolen or lost.

You guys have bad luck

[spooge]

Post boxes are a good way to go, your mails safe, dry and allways there.

Its costs money yes, though thats sometimes worth it.

I really like the post lady in the post office i frequent, we chat about stuff, and call each other by name.

She even lent me a book about cactus as we got talkn about trichs.

Planned on taking her a loph graft untill i learned her son is a policeman, i shall take her a plain pachanoi instead.

If ive a bitch about Aus post its fucking cubeing.

Senseless way they calculate postage when sending boxes..... its cheaper to send the same weight and sized item in a postbag than in a box as a boxes dimensions are calculated as part of a cubic meter where a bag isnt.......

[Just Dean]

I to once was ripped off buy the postie , he swears he delivered it although tracking said it was delivered before he even came on the day in question , but fighting a losing battle with the pricks , but what can you do ??

[brooa]

ive had massive problems with aus post not actually delivering the goods. 10 times in a row i watched the postie just jump out of his van throw a card in the box and drive. i eventually got it on camera and it stopped after that. had stuff go missing (already delivered) then turn up at 9pm after having made a complaint. so incompetent >_<

[Halif]

I read earlier this year a proposal to make daily mail deliveries a $30 a year paid service, or just have mail delivered three times a week for no charge. ANyone else read soemthing like that?

First of all, recently I notice that the postie will skip my street once a week on random days. I am just guessing here, but it seems like if there isn't much mail to deliver in a certain street then they're just letting it sit for another day. I've seen the guy (he's a good postie, BTW, very careful with letters and parcels and a nice guy all round) go past the street, missing it altogether. This seems to be happening more often recently.

Anyone else notice soemthing like that?

I'd pay $30 a year to ensure daily mail deliveries, but it seems kind of silly because if I'm the only person who did that in my street (just for example), then he'd have to ride down the whole length of the street everyday just for me. I don't know... would such a thing be economically viable?

[Francois le Danque]

All i have to say is that i worked for AP for about a year and i totally understand why people "go postal". fucking maddening work.

my favourite customer was the one who blamed me personally (i was behind the desk, yasee ) for 'losing' her parcel. It went where she told it to! She just moved house and expected Post to know, somehow! I told her to ensure she knew how a door worked on her way out or it might hit her in the face. The other customers in line all cheered.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Frank leDank

[Slocombe]

I read earlier this year a proposal to make daily mail deliveries a $30 a year paid service, or just have mail delivered three times a week for no charge.

You aren't imagining it but it is hard to tell if it will happen (you can find out what's happening when the budget comes out in May)

[mystical oyster]

I've had a couple more recent parcels squashed, including one from the states and it was bubble wrapped, yet some seeds were still squashed. most survived but i got sent some leuchtenbergia principis seed and they were all damaged, must be softer then the other seeds which came with it, echinocactus and notocactus

[waterboy 2.0]

standard letter postage now 70 cents....grrrr Australia Post...grrrr

[mycologystart]

A pair of Bhut and Trinidad chilli seeds I purchased came squashed in the mail unfortunately. Cost me a good 20 dollars for 30 or so to be squashed by Aus Post.

Now, what will happen if it becomes privatised...

[incognito]

Where the seeds protected if not it's ur vendors fault

[singult]

standard letter postage now 70 cents....grrrr Australia Post...grrrr

I KNOW, right? And they don't fucking tell anyone. I heard there's an amnesty on your 60c stamps, but seeing the post office sprang this hike on us, SO HOW DO WE EVEN KNOW WHEN THE AMNESTY ENDS?

God, I'm so angry I could ragequ-

[mycologystart]

Where the seeds protected if not it's ur vendors fault

Oh, it was protected.

Seeds in zip lock bag in a bubble wrap envelope.

I just wonder what went wrong...?

[Snowfella]

Read an interesting thead in another forum where a member got delivered a camera lens with a broken clear filter and front lenscap jammed in hard enough that he had to force it loose.

Very solidly bubble wrapped and taped along with a solidly tape wrapped cardboard box that showed no hint of any impacts. It was all jammed into the box to the point that nothing could move within it.

Lots of discussion later over what could of caused the damage nailed down the likely culprit to be it's prolonged stay at 30 000 feet in the hold of an airplane and the drop in pressure associated with said transit. Everything was just packaged in soo tight and with no expansion possible from the taped up box that the expansion of the bubblewrap from lower pressure had no where to go other than in towards the lens, weakest point being the lenscap and underlaying filter.

[Halif]

I noticed a fairly sudden (and hopefully temporary) drop off (pun intended) in the overall effeciency of mail delivery. If I sent a basic 70c stamped envelope with nothing but a letter inside to someone in the same state as me, it would nearly always arrive at the recipients place the following day provided that I posted the letter early on the previous day. Now it frequently takes two to three days, and once it even took a week! (This was not during a long weekend or Christmas period).

So I decided to spend extra on Express postage, but to my amazement (and horror) the increase in price made little difference. Seeing as how big the difference is in cost between a single stamp and an Express post bag, I would expect there to be a clear advantage in the more expensive offer. It was annoying when I spent extra on express just to send a two-page letter to a friend so he'd get it before the weekend as his birthdayh was on Saturday. I sent it Thursday and it arrived Tuesday the next week...

Any one else notice the seemingly arbitrary delivery times? Especially for the more expensive and supposedly faster options? I don't bother with express for simple letters anymore, but there's still a 50% chance they'll arrive the next day with just standard 70c stamp.

Don't get me wrong, i think overall the cost of postage and speed of delivery has been excellent for years, it's just recently when things started to take far longer than usual to arrive that I thought it'd be nice to have an Express that was truly express, not "could be faster than a 70c stamp, not sure. It's up to you. Take a punt. Or not. Next in line!".