Australia Post competes!

They compete in two ways.
  1. In terms of a parcel delivery service, they "sort of" compete with a range of other courier services. I have put the qualifier in because Auspost seems to be a subcontractor for several of their alleged competitors.  (Go figure.)  From my personal experience as a rural user of courier service the Post kicks the competition's butt.  As one consignor said to me"Australia Post are bad, but at least they are consistent.  The private sector people are usually just as bad, but totally inconsistent."
  2. In terms of their general management they compete with Telstra and QANTAS for displaying the worst aspects of uncontrolled corporate misinformation.  
This little rant has come about specifically as a reaction to a letter we received from Australia Post offering us a Free!!!!!! digital mailbox into which businesses can dump their correspondence and we can apparently store things.  A few issues arise:
  • I guess no-one at Australia Post has heard of email, through which many businesses correspond with us, nor direct debit through which we already pay most bills (I use about 2 cheques a year these days).
  • They also don't seem to realise that names are not standard.  That well known identity Joseph Q Blow might use that name or any one of Joe Blow, Joe Q Blow, Joseph Quintillius Blow, or J Q Blow.  Do the all need separate registrations?  Add in joint accounts with his good lady wife (who for her own good reasons has kept her maiden name),  Lucretia Messalina McTaggart and the list of combinations rapidly approaches 3 digits.
To make things worse I sent them an e-query asking about the second point.  A week later I have received no reply: perhaps it is coming by snail mail?  (I have now received a reply: unfortunately it is gibberish and after 3 readings I ave had to ask them for a clearer explanation.  Wait for another post!)

I assume that this is some form of preemptive reaction to the losses being made by the letter service.  In the media discussion of this the point has been made that 90% of letters are sent by businesses (presumably including slimy politicians seeking my vote and mendacious charities seeking my money).  This made us realise that these days we hardly get any personal letters (and send even less) except for Christmas and birthdays.  Our main mail is: 
  1. Some magazines (the good stuff);
  2. bills from a few troglodyte businesses which still send out hard copy invoices;
  3. advertising crap (see image above)we don't want; and
  4. cards from Australia Post to say we have stuff to pick up at the PO (as they don't deliver parcels out here)!

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