What you can expect if you send a package with even
slightly fragile contents through Australia Post
(and then hope the Commonwealth Ombudsman will help you)
This is a Dick Smith Electronics Q1803 oscilloscope in its own padded carton,
inside a registered Australia Post box marked....
Note: Registered postage includes contents insurance of up to $100.00
This is its rubber-mounted glass cathode ray tube (CRT) and magnetic shield
after a trip through Australia Post.
Even one of the CRT's glass electron gun supports has snapped.
It takes one hell of a mechanical shock to do that.
After finding that the oscilloscope wasn't working and hearing broken glass inside the CRT, but before I had a chance to disassemble it and confirm that the CRT was broken, I took everything to a main post office for them to assess the adequacy of the packaging. They got me to fill out a long-winded Customer Service Complaint form (their first line of defence against customers making complaints), kept everything, then started giving me the run-around. All the details are in my letter to the Commonwealth Ombudsman further down.
Almost four weeks later I got this letter from Australia Post:
I tried twice to contact this person by phone to explain that at no point was I given a chance to explain what the damage to the oscilloscope was, and each time I got her answering machine which promised that my call would be returned. Neither of my calls were returned, just as not one of the promised phone calls from Australia Post from the beginning of this saga ever eventuated - see below.
Next I wrote this letter to the Commonwealth Ombudsman after visiting their website which asked me to describe my complaint against Australia Post and what outcome I would like:
After an intermediate letter saying they were requesting information from Australia Post, I received this predictable final letter from one government department checking that another government department's working to their own rule that "If there's no visible external damage, the item is not damaged and we won't pay any compensation."....
[ Names and phone numbers are blurred out so as not to leave myself open to being sued ]
My interpretation of all this is:
Australia Post and its contractors can throw around and drop from great heights all packages including (or especially) the ones marked 'Fragile' as much as they like, and as long as those packages land flat on the floor so there's no visible external evidence of the impact(s), you don't have a hope of being compensated for whatever internal damage they cause to the contents.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman will only check to see if Australia Post followed its own rules.
