Australia Post overachieves
Unfortunately the competition was for "Least Competent Provider of Client Service"!
It is rumoured that this is going to be an Olympic event in Rio and I would have to say that if Australia Post can get a team together (a most unlikely occurence) they would be a lay-down misere for the podium.
(As an aside Australia could get 2 of 3 medals if the Passport Office enters: while I was in the PO, the staff were trying to take an acceptable photo of a 2 year old. This, totally unreasonably, for a 2 yo required the photograph:
After 2 of the 3 staff on duty had put in 20 minutes on this task the queue for other services was out the door. The patience of the staff, the mum with the kid and indeed the kid himself was brilliant. )
In my previous post about this odious organisation I dealt with the process of trying to cancel a mail hold. Now I have tried to start a new hold and find that their site can't verify my identity, despite my carefully typing in my Drivers licence and passport details. I tried their help line but the female there said "Ohhh - that is a technical issue so I will refer it to them by email."
Knowing that to be hopeless I have just had to drive to Queanbeyan to put in the hard copy.
Having achieved that I thought I would try the help line again. Unfortunately this was on a Saturday and even the AP hotline doesn't take calls on weekends! Watch this space.
So, still on the Saturday, I put in a message to their feedback line explaining the problem. Obviously as it was Saturday I got no response until Monday. About 4 pm on the Monday I got a call from someone on the helpline and we spent about 15 minutes trying to see what could be done. The short answer was "nothing": I am locked out of the system and the nice lady had nothing in her manual as to how to deal with this situation. She will refer to their technical area for resolution.
I did comment that I could only see two possible causes:
The nice lady assured me that option 2 was not possible. Either she hasn't read any Stieg Larsson books (or she thinks I haven't!)
I should expect it to take 10 days, yes count them, 10 - that is 1 more than 9 - days to explore this and fix it. And I presume that means 10 AP working days or 14 proper days. Far canal: for this their CEO has been pulling down millions of bucks a year since 2012?
I also took the chance to ask why it takes 3 days for a redirection or hold to become effective. Apparently the shop has to transmit it to the Mail Centre: given the mail centre works non normal hours I can see a lag coming in there. The Mail Centre has to log it (should take no time, as it is already in a computer) then they have to print some labels - if there is a big queue that should introduce a delay of up to 5 minutes and the Mail Centre has to tell the administrators (should take no time, as it is already in a computer). However given their competence level each step here probably requires an overnight update ......
As before watch this space.
Now 16 November and absolutely no response from AP. They have just got a polite reminder - a less polite one is being composed. Here is the tale of November 23.
It is rumoured that this is going to be an Olympic event in Rio and I would have to say that if Australia Post can get a team together (a most unlikely occurence) they would be a lay-down misere for the podium.
(As an aside Australia could get 2 of 3 medals if the Passport Office enters: while I was in the PO, the staff were trying to take an acceptable photo of a 2 year old. This, totally unreasonably, for a 2 yo required the photograph:
- to only include the kid;
- mouth must be shut,
- must be looking full face at the camera;
- ears must be showing,
- no hands near face etc etc.
After 2 of the 3 staff on duty had put in 20 minutes on this task the queue for other services was out the door. The patience of the staff, the mum with the kid and indeed the kid himself was brilliant. )
In my previous post about this odious organisation I dealt with the process of trying to cancel a mail hold. Now I have tried to start a new hold and find that their site can't verify my identity, despite my carefully typing in my Drivers licence and passport details. I tried their help line but the female there said "Ohhh - that is a technical issue so I will refer it to them by email."
Knowing that to be hopeless I have just had to drive to Queanbeyan to put in the hard copy.
Having achieved that I thought I would try the help line again. Unfortunately this was on a Saturday and even the AP hotline doesn't take calls on weekends! Watch this space.
So, still on the Saturday, I put in a message to their feedback line explaining the problem. Obviously as it was Saturday I got no response until Monday. About 4 pm on the Monday I got a call from someone on the helpline and we spent about 15 minutes trying to see what could be done. The short answer was "nothing": I am locked out of the system and the nice lady had nothing in her manual as to how to deal with this situation. She will refer to their technical area for resolution.
I did comment that I could only see two possible causes:
- their verification system has suffered a catastrophic failure; or
- as a result of my complaint last time someone has put a block on my account.
The nice lady assured me that option 2 was not possible. Either she hasn't read any Stieg Larsson books (or she thinks I haven't!)
I should expect it to take 10 days, yes count them, 10 - that is 1 more than 9 - days to explore this and fix it. And I presume that means 10 AP working days or 14 proper days. Far canal: for this their CEO has been pulling down millions of bucks a year since 2012?
I also took the chance to ask why it takes 3 days for a redirection or hold to become effective. Apparently the shop has to transmit it to the Mail Centre: given the mail centre works non normal hours I can see a lag coming in there. The Mail Centre has to log it (should take no time, as it is already in a computer) then they have to print some labels - if there is a big queue that should introduce a delay of up to 5 minutes and the Mail Centre has to tell the administrators (should take no time, as it is already in a computer). However given their competence level each step here probably requires an overnight update ......
As before watch this space.
Now 16 November and absolutely no response from AP. They have just got a polite reminder - a less polite one is being composed. Here is the tale of November 23.
Comments
I can certainly see where you are coming from! However I believe that AP are far and away the worst around. They are even worse than Microsoft - a very big call.
As I said in the earlier post the contrast between the very helpful folk in the shops and the non-system available online is dramatic. This is emphasised by the obscene salary paid to the head of the organisation, supposedly to improve its efficiency.
Martin