Never short of a target for brickbats when ....

.. you can deal with Australia Post.

My last post on this organisation was on 31 October and I should have received some communication from them by about 14 November.  I sent them a reminder on 16 November but by 23 November had heard nothing so I gave them a ring.  In fact several rings!
  1. At about 0854 I spoke to Brandon, who seemed to totally not understand the problem I was calling about, but put me on hold while he contacted the Online support area.  After about 5 minutes of adverts for various Australia Post products the call terminated.  I didn't have time to call back until 1552 when I spoke to Emma.  
  2. Emma seemed a bit more alert and understood the problem but put me on hold while she tried to transfer me to Online Support.  More adverts including one for "Load and Go" cards.  After about 6 minutes I suddenly got a message demanding that I enter my 16 digit "Load and Go" card number.  Que?  I did nothing and eventually was asked to press 2 to speak to a customer service representative.  So I did.  "All of our representatives are busy helping other customers "  "We are currently experiencing high call volumes"  .  Line gets very crackly and back into the adverts.
  3. At 1604 I gave up and rang again, speaking to Darryl and telling him the story.He offered to put me on hold while he contacted online support.  In light of the previous problems I asked for a phone number to let me speak to online support.  He doesn't have a number but can only contact them electronically!!!  He then put me on hold while he spoke to his supervisor.  After about 5 minutes he returned - amazing, 1 out of 3 - and said all he could do was refer it to On-line support.  I said I had a new hold request set up: should I try it (I'd set that up before calling Emma).  Giving it a go I got an error message that my call had timed out!!!!  So he has given me a new task number and says I should get a response within 10 working days.
After speaking with him I tried the hold process again: I am still locked out of the system.  

In my call with Darryl I went through the list of issues I have difficulties with.

Big issues

  1. Why didn't the verification work?  
  2. Why has no-one got back to me with an answer to (1)?
  3. What can be done to fix the problem?
Lesser issues
  1. Why is it impossible to speak to tech support?
  2. Why have 2 calls to the helpline gone into meltdown?
  3. Why is the Australia Post on-line system so bad?
One might think after the foregoing things couldn't get more bizarre.  However on the following day (24 November)  I got a phone call from Australia Post saying that a service request had been lodged from this number.  There followed a three question survey.  I was looking forward to this.  They said"If you had made a request press 1" So I did.  They then said "Press 2" so I did.  Then they said "thank you" and the call terminated!

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