Don't get me started. Ordered a drill chuck from Brisbane on Sunday, overnight to Cairns. Two business days later it gets to the Cairns depot on Tuesday, but not actually onto the van for delivery to me. Day after that, I was not home and delivery driver needed a signature, so left a card saying collect parcel "at depot". No address for depot. But the card had both Australia Post logo and Startrack logo on it. Aha, depot must be local post office as with most other packages! Nope, not us they say, and send me on a wild goose chase to StarTrack depot 15km away into town to a street that was totally wrong. (It was the Toll depot!) Meanwhile, 5pm so all doors shut up everywhere.
Go on Star Track's website. Will not recognise my consignment number. So call their 13 number. No worries mate. It will be delivered tomorrow and will not require a signature.
Next day, Thursday by now, it never turns up. So the next morning after , Friday now, I call the 13 number again. Some Indian fella tells me I can collect the parcel at Innisfail depot- a tiny country town 70km from Cairns. Bollocks I says, let me talk to someone else. Three call transfers later, more hold music than my sanity can bear, get a bloke in Brisbane who puts me on hold while he calls the Cairns depot to find out what's what.
Tells me, oh yeah they will deliver it today. I ask if it is not already in the delivery van can I just drive into town and pick it up from depot. They weren't able to tell me if it is already on the van or not, he says. OK, I says, I'm going into town anyway, give me the depot address and I'll stop by and see where exactly my parcel is at. Oh, no mate. Can't tell you the depot address unless you have officially requested pick up and the parcel has been "isolated" given clearance and made ready for pick up, which will take another day at least! Your depot address is a secret then, I ask. That's right he says. But it says 22 Redden Street on Yellowpages.com.au I says. I couldn't comment on that until the parcel has been "isolated" he says.
So will I get a refund on my money that I paid for overnight delivery and it has now taken from Monday to Friday and I still am not sure if I will get it delivered today or if it is at the secret depot whose address you won't tell me? I says. You'd have to ask the sender about that, they paid the actual shipping, he says. Yeah right, have a nice day I says.
It turned up late afternoon not in the usual delivery van but in a large long haul truck with a driver mystified as to why he was making a suburban stop off.
Don't get me effin started on Australia Post and their new partner StarTrack. Just don't.
