What is Australia Post doing?

[Cunctator]

In early January I posted two packages to a friend in Wembley, a suburb of Perth, in Western Australia. The packages were exactly the same: identically addressed, posted at the same time in the same postbox. The first package arrived in Perth, as expected, a couple of days later. The second didn't. It simply disappeared into the void.

This morning my friend called me to say that the second package had finally arrived at her place, six weeks later, after an epic journey via Spokane in Washington state (which has the same abbreviation, WA, as Western Australia).

What on earth is Australia Post doing? If there isn't a foreign country included in the address, surely the obvious conclusion is that the destination is the Australian Wembley, not the American one!

[FinnAgain]

I'm sorry it's just funny for someone named cunctator to mind things being delayed.

[don't ask]

Pathetic isn't it? And they only handle 20,000,000 articles a day. You'd think they could manage that with 100% accuracy.

[jabiru]

Provided the postcode was correct, there's no reason in the world why the parcel should have left the country. Isn't that what postcodes are for?

I generally don't even put the state on items I'm posting because 3*** denotes somewhere in Victoria, not the west coast of Canada.

[Cunctator]

Provided the postcode was correct, there's no reason in the world why the parcel should have left the country. Isn't that what postcodes are for?

Yes, that's pretty much what I thought too.

[buns3000]

Pathetic isn't it? And they only handle 20,000,000 articles a day. You'd think they could manage that with 100% accuracy. Do you work for Australia Post?

The last 2 things I've posted overnight within the Melbourne metro area didn't get there until the second day after posting. $3.60 well spent.

[Go You Big Red Fire Engine]

Do you work for Australia Post?

The last 2 things I've posted overnight within the Melbourne metro area didn't get there until the second day after posting. $3.60 well spent.
Do you mean you express posted them, and they still didn't arrive in time? Because don't you get a free one if that happens?

[Dunderman]

Pathetic isn't it? And they only handle 20,000,000 articles a day. You'd think they could manage that with 100% accuracy.
Sending the package to the wrong country is a pretty big inaccuracy, especially when the package was never supposed to leave the country to start with.

[don't ask]

Actually I did work for them for a little while. Once you see the stuff being chucked into bags and bins and falling out of things or behind things it is easy to see why some goes astray and surprising that more doesn't. Once it's out of sight in a bag it's off to wherever they label on the bag says.

I once lost a letter off a conveyor belt. In getting it from behind the machinery I discovered a 3 year old airmail letter from the UK.

As to things arriving late maybe TheLoadedDog can confirm whether they still use the same principle - in order to keep up the % of stuff delivered on time, once a pile of mail was already late it was just chucked aside so as not to slow down the not yet late stuff.

[TheLoadedDog]

I can confirm what Don't Ask said.


I'm an Australia Post employee. I'll get back to you guys with a more complete post when I'm not so tired.

SHORT VERSION: Shit happens, but actually not that much.

[TheLoadedDog]

Hokay, I'm awake now.

Now, I'm not particularly out to defend my employer, nor to put the boot into them. I'll tell you what I know as both an old fashioned manual sorter and also as a sorting machine operator.

When I am sorting letters by hand, I am expected to sort 1500 articles per hour, with a 99% accuracy, based on several thousand memorised placenames. I can usually more or less achieve this. When I am running a latest generation Lockheed Martin MLOCR (Multi-Line Optical Character Recognition) unit, I can usually crank the old girl up to sort at about 37 000 articles per hour. The error rate is not as good as it is for manual sorting, but it's still surprisingly accurate. The slight increase in mis-sorted articles when going through a machine is a trade off for the sheer volume those babies can sort. In the old days, if your mail was delayed it was possibly because it had been manually mis-sorted, but more likely because, although it was still in the correct mail stream, it was sitting in a backlog somewhere. These days, it is less likely to be left behind for the next day, and more likely to have been sent to the wrong place. That said, Australia Post's reliability is currently at an all-time high of about 94 - 98% of articles arriving at their correct destination on time. This compares well with the bad old days of the 1970s and 80s. Of course, this is little consolation if you are one of the 5% whose letter is late. In the postal system's defence though, there is also a psychological element at play here - people don't notice the letters that arrive on time.

To explain the errors, and how they happen, I'll start with manual sorting. 1500 letters per hour might not sound like much, but when you include "travelling time" (modern sorting frames are wrap-around, and we have to swivel our chair left and right), time away from the frame to collect mail, and time to "clear down" full apertures and remove the mail, it starts to be moderately difficult to achieve the required sorting rate. It's a steady thud thud thud of letters being sorted. Add in to the mix that approximately 5 to 10% of private mail is incompletely or incorrrectly addressed... **ahem**
I generally don't even put the state on items I'm posting because 3*** denotes somewhere in Victoria, not the west coast of Canada. (please do put VIC on it - do you know how many suburb names Melbourne and Sydney share? Or that there are SEVEN Mount Pleasants in Australia? Or that Victoria sometimes uses non-3000 series postcodes? Or that human sorters don't use postcodes much?)

...some of it is illegible, and much computer generated stuff (bills etc) is not much better, and it starts getting tricky. Further add that it's not exactly a stimulating job, and it's easy to wander off on a train of thought, and what might seem like a very silly mistake to an outsider is actually quite plausible.

My sorting centre has a 74-way break on its sorting frames. Four of these are for overseas: New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, Overseas (for everywhere else - it'll be resorted at the International Mail Facility - we just do the three biggest countries for them to save time). The other seventy apertures are for Australian destinations. Now let's say I pick up a bundle of mail and start sorting. Suddenly I get a "run" of mail to the United States. The sender hasn't actually written United States on the letters (this is very common - they expect us to know, and usually we do). So as I flick through, I'm looking at the last line, and they are all two-letter US state abbreviations: CA, WA, WA, FL, IL, NC, WA. What? WA? I'd been sorting US mail, but the letters reverted to Australian mail, and that last WA was Western Australia, not Washington. At speed, this is easy to do. We only read the last line of the address (others are for the postman), and we don't even read the last line fully if we are going fast - a common address like PARRAMATTA NSW 2150 will register in our minds just as the familiar shape of those characters. We don't actually read it.

I have seen a letter going from Florida to Sidney Ohio. Sidney isn't even the same spelling, yet that didn't stop it from getting covered in NOT SYDNEY NOVA SCOTIA and NOT SYDNEY NEW SOUTH WALES stamps. It was a well-travelled letter, that one.

Sometimes letters stick together. When I pick one up, a smaller one is hidden underneath. As I sort the top one, the sudden movement breaks the bottom one free, and it floats unseen into the aperture below. It could end up anywhere. This again, is relatively common. A letter bound for New Zealand could find itself languishing at London's Mt Pleasant (yes, another one) Sorting Centre this way, adding days or weeks to its journey. A letter going to London will end up at LAX.

Or I'll be sorting away, and the guy next door says, "Hey TLD, where does Gooloogong go to, mate?"

"It goes via Bathurst."

As I reply, I have a letter in my hand for HOBART TAS 7000. In that split second, Bathurst is in my head, and it goes to country NSW instead of Tasmania. This absentmindedness is not uncommon.

In short, the 99% accuracy rate is more or less adhered to. The mistakes which do happen have a variety of causes. I am not defending them - they shouldn't happen - but often they are not as hard to believe as first thought.

The automated sorting machines are a similar story. The current Lockheed Martin models are third generation machines. The first, in the 1970s, were of French design, and required an operator to manually key in postcodes. The second appeared in about 1990, and were manufactured by AEG. They were the first OCR units, and are still in use. Their accuracy is quite good, but they are slow. the latest ones have pushed the speed right up without losing much accuracy. That said, OCR is still an embryonic technology in a way. The machine will make some mistakes. There is no way around it.

The fifteen year-old AEG units were supposedly able to read the entire address, but mostly relied on the last line. The new Lockheed Martin ones read the whole thing and compare the values of the different lines. For example, if it received 200 Pitt Street Brisbane NSW 2000, it would reconcile all the attributes of the address as being Sydney not Brisbane, and would either sort it to Sydney, or reject it to manual sorting.

Sometimes it gets this wrong. Sometimes, it simply fucks up. Getting a computer to sort handwritten addresses is not easy. There are mistakes that cannot be explained.

In the case of your parcel Cunctator, there are large machines which are the parcel equivalent of the MLOCRs (I work in mails, not parcels, so that is why this post is letter-oriented, but the principles are the same). These machines are capable of stuff-ups too.

In short, the network is quite robust. The amount of mail that gets moved per day (1 million articles at Christmas time per day in my facility alone) would have been unheard of in the old days. Most of it gets there on time.


The fuck ups that do happen are probably 50/50 the customers' and Australia Post's fault. Here is what you can do to minimise the chances of this happening to your mail.

1. Address your mail properly
This is increasingly important these days, due to the high level of automation.

John Smith
23 Bellbird St
GOSFORD NSW 2250

Left-aligned, no commas or other punctuation, bottom line in caps. If writing to a foreign address, the country name should be in English. The rest of the address should be in the language of destination.

2. Use standard envelopes
Australians should use DL-sized "post office preferred" envelopes in either white or a very pale pastel colour. If there are those "postcode squares" on it, only use these for handwritten addresses. Ignore them if the address is printed. Ignore them if the address is foreign (some countries have a similar four-digit postcode - South Africa is one).

3. No enclosures other than paper
If you are mailing a letter, don't put items such as pens etc in it. It will stand a good chance of being torn to shreds by the machines. Send a proper parcel instead. Remember those Paddle Pop promotions where you send in the sticks? There is a good reason why you don't see them anymore.

4. Keep your address in the "Address Zone"
The address should be roughly in the middle of the letter, with generous white space below it (at least a couple of cm) and also white space on the reverse side at the bottom. These areas are used for barcoding, and dark colours on them such as alphabetical characters, pictures of Garfield, or "I **heart** you" stickers etc can flip out the OCR. It is preferable to include your return address on the front top left corner than on the back. Flipping envelopes slows manual sorting.

5. Don't Use Registered Mail
It doesn't provide the same level of security as it used to, and is a waste of money. It is sorted with the regular mail, and is only treated differently at the post offices at either end.

6. Do use Express Post
Although Express Post is a speed service, not a security one, I maintain it offers the best risk and value for money in sending valuables. Express Post is sorted manually all the time. The satchels are not much dearer than ordinary parcels, but they are treated like royalty. And it is fast, with overnight delivery between most Australian capital cities.

7. Use of pillar boxes (street posting boxes)
They close at 6pm sharp. After that, there is no guarantee. Don't confuse the yellow Express Post and Red normal ones. This will delay your mail.

A note on valuables:
Try not to send cash, jewellery etc through the postal system. Mail theft is quite rare, but I've seen it happen, and I've seen the squads of black-suited goons seemingly arrive from nowhere and haul the offender away. It is highly uncommon though. Nonetheless, use your common sense. Express Post satchels are good for valuable things because they are so anonymous. They all look the same. If you ar ereally paranoid, bear in mind that the postman is the weak link - the mail sorters are under constant video surveillance, but the postie is not, so send your mail to "co Post Office, Suburb", and tell the recipient to pick it up there.

[Cunctator]

Thanks TLD. That's very interesting information and goes a long way to explaining how articles can sometimes go astray. What piqued my curiosity in this situation was the "twin" element. I just couldn't see how two identical parcels (correctly addressed in line with the Australia Post convention you mention) could have been treated so differently.

You've also confirmed what I long suspected about the treatment of Registered Mail.

[TheLoadedDog]

Actually, I can confirm most of what Don't Ask said, except for the bit about further delaying already late mail. I'm not aware of this happening, although it's quite plausible in theory and it may happen. These days though, we are audited by BIG INTERNATIONAL COMPANY WHOSE NAME ESCAPES ME, and degrees of lateness are measured, so it's probably not on the cards now.

What does happen in these competitive corpporate times of managers being pitched against one another is that different types of mail are given different priorities. To explain: a letter going from one Perth suburb to another Perth suburb will be treated very well indeed at the Perth Mail Centre. This is because if the article is late, the fault can only lie with the PMC. Mail coming in from interstate will be given less priority because "we can always blame Sydney". Mail from overseas is the bottom of the pecking order, and is often late: "Don't blame us, it only arrived in the country yesterday. Blame the other postal administration."

Do you mean you express posted them, and they still didn't arrive in time? Because don't you get a free one if that happens?
That is correct. See your post office.

[jabiru]

(please do put VIC on it - do you know how many suburb names Melbourne and Sydney share? Or that there are SEVEN Mount Pleasants in Australia? Or that Victoria sometimes uses non-3000 series postcodes? Or that human sorters don't use postcodes much?)


OK, I am suitably chastened but if I put MT PLEASANT 3350, why would the article end up in any of the other Mt Pleasants?

[jabiru]

It is preferable to include your return address on the front top left corner than on the back. Flipping envelopes slows manual sorting.

Now, that is interesting. You never see it in Oz, except on pre-printed business envelopes.

[Junior Spaceman]

Thanks for all the info, TLD - jeez, in a perfect world, that wouldn't be a pit post, but a Staff Report *grin*.

I can certainly sympathise with the difficulties of mail sorting - I recently worked in a middle sized firm's mail room, and even then, when I knew everyone personally, I still made the occasional mistake due to being asked a question at the instant that I was sorting a letter, or perhaps just because I made a wrong judgment on an ambiguously addressed package.

I'm interested in what you said about Registered Post, though. Most people and companies that I know use it more so that there is a legal 'trail' for the letter, rather than for extra protection of the item itself, but what did you mean by saying not to bother using it?

[matt_mcl]

I have seen a letter going from Florida to Sidney Ohio. Sidney isn't even the same spelling, yet that didn't stop it from getting covered in NOT SYDNEY NOVA SCOTIA and NOT SYDNEY NEW SOUTH WALES stamps.

As an aside, I LOVE that they have stamps like this.

[Eliahna]

I love Australia Post. They almost always amaze me with the speed and accuracy of the service, and all for just 50 cents. That said, I was amused this Christmas when my friends in America got their Christmas cards more than a week before my friend in Queensland got the card that I mailed to her at the same time. I find post to WA is dodgy too - sometimes it's quick, sometimes it's very slow. I've had replies from England faster than deliveries to WA at times. But all in all, I can't say a bad word against Australia Post.

[buns3000]

Do you mean you express posted them, and they still didn't arrive in time? Because don't you get a free one if that happens? Of course, I know that. I doubt whether they get taken up on it too often though. I mean, firstly, the thing is I wanted the thing to get there by the next day. After the event, a free express post envelope doesn't mean shit to me compared to my dad getting his birthday present on the day of his birthday and not the day after that.

Secondly, a free express post envelope is only worth more than a 50 cent postage stamp to the extent that Australia Post is able to actually deliver on the promise of next business day delivery. My recent experiences lead me to believe the likelihood of them doing so is about one in two. I daresay that, with those odds, its not worth my bother making a trek to the post office. If I did make it that far, I wouldn't want to be the AP employee who tells me I have to prove the package didn't arrive the next business day by getting a stat dec from the recipient.

[Gadfly]

Wow, TLD. Wow. That was a tour de force.

[Cunctator]

Of course, I know that. I doubt whether they get taken up on it too often though.
buns3000, I agree that getting a second, free express post envelope isn't really much of a substitute for having the first one delivered on time, as promised. But I have taken Australia Post up on its guarantee twice over the past five years or so and asked for the free one - if only to uphold the principle and force Australia Post to acknowledge that it stuffed up.

[TheLoadedDog]

I'm interested in what you said about Registered Post, though. Most people and companies that I know use it more so that there is a legal 'trail' for the letter, rather than for extra protection of the item itself, but what did you mean by saying not to bother using it?
You raise a good point there. The "legal trail" side of things is a useful aspect of Registered Mail, especially if you ask the recipient to return the little cardboard acknowledgement of receipt. I have used it myself for such things as formal requests to close accounts and the like. However, I wouldn't bother to use it for sending a personal item of value. The articles are not tracked in transit, and if one went missing between Sydney and Perth, they wouldn't even know which state to begin looking in. Even if they knew which building it was in, it'd be a needle in a haystack. The old "Security Post" service (up until about ten years ago) had every item scanned in and out of each sorting facility it transitted. Records were kept, numbers of articles in and out were balanced at the end of the shift, a detailed manifest was included in the bag, and the bags were sent out with a lead seal and signed and countersigned for. They even used to send empty bags! Say for example there were no Security Post articles for the Wagga Wagga region that day, they'd sent out a sealed mail bag with a little paper advice in it "number of atricles: 0". This was to eliminate the possibility that a bag had been misrouted or otherwise gone missing. You could locate any item in the country within minutes. All that is gone now though.

OK, I am suitably chastened but if I put MT PLEASANT 3350, why would the article end up in any of the other Mt Pleasants?
Sorry, I did sound a bit schoolmarm-ish there, didn't I? You can actually get away with doing atrocious things to the address, and we usually get it through for you. Consider my favourite ever - a letter arriving ex-China had obviously had the address copied by a person with absolutely no English, and was (from memory) more or less as follows:

Chen's Chinese Restaurant
Open Seven Days
Eat in or Take Away
No MSG
Tel: 9207 ****
Sydney

I checked it against the telephone directory, and put the correct street address on it. It got there. Similarly, if you were to throw a letter into any pillar box anywhere in Australia with only my first name and the postcode on it, I'd probably get it (sorting centres have their own postcodes).

So what happens if you do something minor like not put the state abbreviation on the address? Well, usually not much. It'll probably get there on time. However, I indicated above the sometimes vague nature of both human and mechanical sorting, and the more information you include in the address, the better your chances of not having it delayed. If the machine that day happens to be ornery and decides your handwritten '3' looks a bit like a '2', having that 'VIC' on there will probably convince it otherwise, In the end it's up to you. For mine, I'll happily make the extra few pen strokes.

Of course, I know that. I doubt whether they get taken up on it too often though. I mean, firstly, the thing is I wanted the thing to get there by the next day. After the event, a free express post envelope doesn't mean shit to me compared to my dad getting his birthday present on the day of his birthday and not the day after that.
This is a frequent complaint: "Hey, that was my passport you arseholes! I don't give a shit about the free envelope".

Fact is, the service is not infallible. No postal administration in the world can offer that. No private courier can either. There is a reason why they don't mail nuclear missile launch codes. You have to decide how valuable an item is to you, and if it's worth the risk of posting. The risk is small, but it's there. Beyond a certain point, you'd be buying a Virgin Blue ticket and taking it there yourself in your pocket - and for certain things people do just that. Even then you might find yourself at a fogbound airport.

There is no one answer to this. You decide. All I can tell you is that you may rest assured that when Express Post items are delayed or mis-sorted, we get our arses royally kicked.

Also, make sure you always sign the dangerous goods declaration. If you don't, that sucker ain't going anywhere within a bull's roar of an airport. It'll be chucked on the back of a semi with all the regular mail.

The other thing to mention is the concrete floor test. Stand on a concrete floor, hold the parcel with your arms straight out from your body, and let go. If you're scared to do that, you probably shouldn't be posting it. People post cartons of wine in their original box and wonder why bottles get broken. We don't deliberately beat your mail up, but we can't treat it with kid gloves either. There is no time for that.

Secondly, a free express post envelope is only worth more than a 50 cent postage stamp to the extent that Australia Post is able to actually deliver on the promise of next business day delivery.
Yes and no. This is another commonly heard comment too. For some areas, what you are saying is true, but the Express Post guaranteed next day delivery network is different to the normal mail. If I send something from Sydney to Parramatta, your point is valid. If I send it to Perth, it is not. You can post an Express Post satchel at 6pm in Sydney, and it'll be delivered to a Perth CBD address the next morning - you can't do that with a standard letter. If I send a letter to Armidale, it'll bounce up the New England Hwy on a truck. It'll be resorted at Tamworth, and put on another truck, and all that takes a couple of days. If I send an Express Post article to Armidale, it'll be on a direct SYD-ARM flight that evening. It pays to check the two different networks and work out if it's worth paying the extra dough for Express. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.


And one last thing. Nobody has mentioned this here, but I'm surprised it hasn't come up (it usually does): WE DON'T X-RAY OR SHINE LIGHTS THROUGH YOUR MAIL TO SEE WHAT'S INSIDE.

I'm not sure where this one comes from, but I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked about this. We have no interest in what is inside your mail. The only exceptions to this are dangerous goods (in this case Australia Post Corporate Security gets involved and having somebody open an article is a rare big, big deal involving wirtnesses, lots of high level authorisations and the like) and mail entering the country. In the case of mail coming in from overseas, it is put through the same customs and quarantine checks that incoming luggage is. Then it is X-rayed at an Australia Post facility but by a Customs Officer, not a postal employee. If the articles are opened, that will be done by a Customs Officer or an AQS person, with an Australia Post employee present.

[Essured]

Similarly, if you were to throw a letter into any pillar box anywhere in Australia with only my first name and the postcode on it, I'd probably get it (sorting centres have their own postcodes).

Damn, that's tempting! First name and postcode only? That's service :cool:

[kambuckta]

Somehow, I just don't quite believe that you'd be able to deliver a letter to a Spiros in 3181 or even a Nguyen in 3121 Loaded..

:p

[Junior Spaceman]

Cheers, TLD.

What you wrote about Express Post envelopes reminds me of something that came up maybe half a dozen times when I was working the mail room - people wanting to send express post letters from Lonsdale Street to Collins Street (ie 3 blocks apart in the CBD). Always seemed a bit pointless to me, but I realised there's not much benefit in the mail room boy correcting a partner ...

[jabiru]

You can actually get away with doing atrocious things to the address, and we usually get it through for you.

I know. I've read some amazing stores about mail addressed to:
Martin the greengrocer
The Corso, Manly Not the beach end - the other end

and it actually getting there. Bravo AP!

[don't ask]

When I worked there I sorted one from overseas addressed to:

Berkelouws
NSW
Australia.

By coincidence I had for years shopped at Berkelouw's Book Barn on the Hume Highway outside Berrima. I hope that when they got it they appreciated the lack of address information.

[furlibusea]

Alot of this stuff is true also for the US postal system. During the time I worked there i constantly found myself amazed at how much actually did get through. More stuff that was woefuly missadressed arived where it was supposed to. Eventualy. As long as there is enough correct information to get it to the right post office it will usualy get where it is should. Every couple of days there would be a letter on the time clock with just a name and the town, letter carriers were supposed to look and see if it was a name they knew, and amazingly, most of that stuff got delivered. The only exception I remember was a letter addressed:

Grandma
Fox Point Towers
Fox Point WI

It might have gotten to grandma if there had been a return address with a name, or if Fox point Towers (not real name of the towers) wasn't a retirement community of condos with 4 buildings each with 100 odd units. The building number might have helped. As it was it eventualy went to Minneapolis to the dead letter office where they would have opened it to see if anything inside gave us a clue.