Safe Drop parcel delivery option

IMPORTANT UPDATE - MARCH 2020

Due to the impact of coronavirus, all freight and shipping companies have implemented contact-less delivery for your parcels whilst the risk of infection is present - your parcels will be dropped at the door and no signature is required.

This measure is also intended to reduce or eliminate the need to attend a parcel collection centre or Post Office.

Please also be aware - the delivery agent MAY NOT KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR - so you need to be vigilant in monitoring all the communications that the shipping companies send you about tracking notifications for your parcel - WE DO NOT SEND TRACKING NOTIFICATIONS, NOR DO WE SEE THESE MESSAGES.

At this time, no date has been provided for when delivery options for your parcel will revert back to normal.

We ask customers to be patient during the virus pandemic as all freight around Australia remains heavily congested and delays are now a normal fact of life.

We continue to do our best to push hard and get your parcel on the road ASAP.

NOVEMBER 2015

From the 2nd November 2015, Australia Post introduced a new feature called "Safe Drop" in the delivery options for your parcel.

This feature is not available for individual selection on the mycuppa.com.au checkout, however, we have already incorporated this function within our operations as a default action.

According to research, approximately 49% of customers have expressed a preference for Safe Drop during Monday to Friday business hours delivery.

Previously, many of our customers took advantage of the existing Authority To Leave feature via our Delivery Instructions/Comments that enabled your parcel to be left at the premises without requiring a Signature on Delivery.

Authority To Leave is handy for those people who may not be present at the time the delivery is performed and enables the parcel to be left in a convenient location on the premises, removing the need to attend the LPO to collect your parcel.

It's important to understand that Authority to Leave can introduce a risk that your parcel may be unexpectedly removed in the period from when it was placed and when you arrive home - so there is that security consideration.

Generally, most customers have been happy with this solution and we have not been made aware of many security problems over the last few years, however, it's critical that you be aware that Australia Post will NOT consider an investigation if the parcel was recorded as being left at the premises via Authority to Leave.

So, let's explain the process involved with the new Safe Drop.

All consignments we now create on the eParcel system will enable the option of Safe Drop. Please don't worry that your order will be at risk !

Once your parcel has left our warehouse, the tracking notification used by AusPost to communicate transit updates gives you the link to MyPost. Within MyPost you will see links to allow a Safe Drop and a selectable list of pre-defined instructions. MyPost also offers you a few additional options that enable you to alter how and where the final delivery point is performed (these are not explained here).

If you do not take up the AusPost invitation to select a Safe Drop, the default behaviour is to require a Signature upon Delivery as per standard practise.

If you proceed with requesting a Safe Drop, the MyPost system will request you accept their terms relating to the Safe Drop option.

Once you have agreed to Safe Drop, you need to be aware that the AusPost delivery representative will also take into consideration the suitability of a Safe Drop at your premises. There needs to be a convenient location that is both out of the weather and out of sight from the street - these are sort of common sense things that AusPost staff have been advised to undertake.

If your premises cannot meet both those requirements, in the interests of safety and security the Safe Drop may not take place, e.g. you will need to collect from the LPO despite requesting the Safe Drop.

Please kindly note that this consideration is made at the precise moment of delivery, not beforehand and it's based upon the assessment of the delivery person.

At the time of writing this article, there is technical bug in the AusPost eParcel system that prevents us (and all merchants using the parcel system) from inserting your specific delivery instructions. This bug will be resolved by AusPost relatively soon. In the meantime, a generic instruction is being used.

Tracking Notifications

Our customers sometimes contact us when they have not received a Tracking Notification from Australia Post after the parcel was despatched from our facility.

This issue has been around for a long time (years) and we have reported it many times.

There are few potential reasons that would lead to a failure to receive a tracking notification:-

1. The email address is invalid or out of date.

The causes here are either you have supplied the wrong email address when ordering (yes, this happens about 10 times a week) or the email address we have for your profile within Australia Post is not accurate (more likely).

www.mycuppa.com.au and AusPost eParcel are distinct and separate systems - they are not synchronized automatically and changing your email address within mycuppa will not flow through automatically to the AusPost system - it's a manual process that our team are constantly managing.

Many of our customers change physical address, or have multiple delivery address locations, so the relationship is 1 to many. Customers also have numerous email addresses so you can see how things can possibly go wrong.

We put many checks in place to counter these scenarios.

2. The AusPost system fails to generate the tracking notification email.

This problem occurs far too frequently for my liking and my view is that is should be more reliable. Email gateways for AusPost are allegedly overloaded or congested at certain times and this can result in messages being dropped, delayed or lost.

3. Message is treated as spam or junk.

As the email tracking notifications sent by AusPost have rich content, including links to web pages, it means that the tracking notification message sent by AusPost may be erroneously deemed by your virus or spam filters as junk.

You would be surprised at how often this tracking message never hit's your inbox because it's been tagged as spam.

Unfortunately, tracking notifications are not a perfect or precise function, but they are getting better. Please be assured that every single consignment (parcel) we create must have an email address present - we are unable to create a consignment without it ! - so we are doing everything we can at our end to improve reliability and ensure our customers are kept well informed.