September 2018 Shipping Update

Date Posted:26 August 2018 

This month we have a bundle of updates to share along with some tips to help your parcel transit run smoothly, so please take a moment to read what's changing.
 

• Sendle is back and it's promising to be much better.
• AusPost raising prices with their introduction of a new fuel levy.
• After far too many customer mistakes in the checkout, we provide some explanation and helpful instructions on how to help ensure your parcel is left at your premises without signature.
• Collection cards are not always reliable.

We have always tried to offer plenty of choices for our customers and this also extends to shipping service providers.

It's hasn't been easy to achieve choices in residential freight - a segment dominated with an almost monopoly influence by AusPost.

Couriers tend to dislike residential deliveries - maybe it's too hard to locate the address, or it's too difficult to find a park nearby or maybe it's incredibly difficult to obtain a signature during business hours as most home owners are out.

So residential freight has traditionally worked out more expensive for couriers compared to delivering to business customers.

Around this time 12 months ago, we started using Sendle and ran with it until the end of Jan this year. Many of our customers loved the speed and low cost from the Sendle service, but other customers were not entirely happy with the ways in which some couriers (and their franchise agents) caused inconvenience when parcels needed to be collected.

Sendle became a service that tries really hard to please everyone, but in reality it's not always going to be suitable to everybody - ultimately, it's the customer decision to choose the carrier.

It's been 7 months since we switched off Sendle due to issues with collections and support. Most of our frustrations were caused with pickups from our warehouse not running consistently.

In that time, Sendle has been listening to it's merchants and introduced additional features to facilitate an improved service experience. Guaranteed collections promises to resolve the primary problem with prompt and regular pickup from our facility.

We have recently enabled Sendle to offer our customers a fair choice or alternative to AusPost.

There can be price and speed benefits of using Sendle, but it can also come at a cost of losing convenience if you rely upon collecting parcels from a Post Office - Sendle agents are not permitted to leave parcels at AusPost infrastructure.

Sendle will also provide our customers with a better chance of avoiding the AusPost crunch in the last quarter of the calendar - a situation that gets worse each year as online shopping continues to grow and put pressure on logistics around Australia.

Sendle is will be cheaper for many capital cities on our most common parcel sizes and we know from late last year we could see transit timeframes almost as fast or even faster than AusPost Express service at a much cheaper rate.

It's important to understand a few key points about Sendle.

• Orders must be in before 3pm at the latest. Collection times are variable and depends upon the courier.
• Our system displays choices for shipping based upon cheapest rate first as the default. Please ensure you check and review this section to choose the service that suits you best - it's too easy to make a mistake or not notice what shipping service you have selected.
• Absolutely NO deliveries can be made by Sendle partners (all couriers, except StarTrack) to AusPost infrastructure - parcel lockers, PO Boxes, etc.
• All Sendle support is web-based only - not phone (you cannot call them). We also don't have a phone number to contact Sendle !
• It's up the receiver (you) to lodge a support ticket with Sendle and this is best performed from the tracking notification Sendle email you - we do not have any special powers to intervene or "fix" something that has gone wrong.
• Whingeing to us about Sendle will be noted, but please understand we can't resolve incidents for you. If you select Sendle as the shipping option in the checkout, please remember we are all adults here and it's important to take a degree of responsibility in the matter if something unfortunately goes wrong - don't just dump it on us and expect miracles and magic fairies. We are facilitating a parcel collection, we have no power to control freight companies.
• We strongly suggest you enable parcels with Authority To Leave. Sendle's delivery agents are local couriers - they don't have the luxury of dropping parcels at the Local Post Office. Sometimes they use special purpose collection points like service stations, newsagents, etc. The information about how and where to collect a parcel from a Sendle partner's delivery attempt will be conveyed on the agent's collection card. We do not get any visibility of details about how these collections are undertaken - it's unique and local to your area. If you are not sure about how to collect a parcel from a Sendle agent or partner, please contact Sendle.
• Sendle parcels are automatically covered by $1000 insurance. Any claims are to be submitted by the receiver (you) directly with Sendle via their web forms - we are not involved in the process.

 

AusPost pricing increase - a new 2.4% fuel levy

As predicted last year, AusPost have introduced a new, additional charge to their freight rates called a fuel levy, from 1 September 2018.

Fuel levies have been an annoying blight in the transport and courier industry for decades. Once implemented, they are impossible to remove or eliminate, regardless of the price of fuel in Australia.

This is an extra cost to on top of their existing rates, raising the cost of their service by a stated 2.4% but we don't have enough detail at this time to know the full impact across the components making up the charge.
 
 

 

Authority To Leave - are you doing it right ?

We continue to cop a surprising amount of flack from customers taking the stick to us - accusing us of changing their orders to prevent parcels from being left at the receiver's premises if nobody was in attendance at the time of delivery.

It certainly does not help matters when messages displayed by AusPost's tracking website incorrectly refer to us as the sender preventing the parcel being left at premises - inflaming an already volatile situation.

First things first - we don't touch customer order data unless instructed to by the customer separately via email authorisation and confirmation. We utilize a fully integrated logistics system - whatever the customer defines on the order in checkout automatically carries through to dispatch - no data is touched or handled by humans.

Secondly, it's important to point out the process actually works. We are not interfering with or over-riding preferences - customers do in fact have parcels left at their premises and more than 60% of our customers use this option for their parcel deliveries.

Most of the time when a customer's parcel is not left at the premises and instead taken to the Post Offices, we find there were one of two reasons involved -

• either the customer made a simple mistake in the checkout by not changing the default delivery option to authorize the parcel to be left at the premises "Authority To Leave Parcel if Receiver Not Available" = YES, or
• the delivery agent acts independently by ignoring a request to leave, or they may deem there is no "safe drop" area.

When progressing through the order checkout, all orders will have the "Authority To Leave Parcel if Receiver Not Available" = NO" as the initial (default) preference. It's very simple to change this to a YES in the checkout and it's important to understand that if you do not change this value, the parcel will not be left unattended.

No instructions will over-ride this setting. In other words, if you leave it as NO and then type in a message, the message is ignored !

The default NO means "Signature Required". It's the default for good reason - parcel security for protecting both us and you.

Parcel insurance is not a feature of our AusPost freight offering today (because it's incredibly clunky and AusPost are way too difficult to deal with). Nothing can be claimed without organising and pre-paying insurance upfront before a parcel leaves our premises. Sendle automatically has coverage for up to $1000 per consignment free of charge.

It's unfortunate and frustrating to see a trend for delivery agents completely ignoring instructions - we have exactly the same issue from our own suppliers - trucks turning up to our warehouse at the wrong times - it's a fact of life.

Delivery agents believe they are either too busy or they just don't care about doing a job properly. Everyone knows changing human behaviour is almost impossible, so if you do encounter this type of behaviour (ignoring clear instructions AND Authority to Leave was set YES) please raise a complaint with your local Post Office. It's a far more effective result and the only way to influence real change - we hit brick walls attempting this change via our account channels.

There is also another feature relating to how parcels are left unattended and it's called "Safe Drop".

Safe Drop was introduced by AusPost in April 2017 as the general default option for parcels. Delivery agents were trained in determining the risk of a safe drop by considering such factors as visibility of the parcel from the front boundary of the premises and the likelihood of someone taking the parcel - it's all about preventing or reducing the risk of parcel theft.

In the first few months following the change to allow Safe Drop we experienced a lot of problems with parcels being "hidden" from customers - around the side of the house, obscured under objects, in the garbage bin, etc. The creative ways delivery agents were using to hide the "safe drop" parcels whilst good intentions were actually annoying our customers and us as we frantically supported customers to locate their "delivered" parcels.

We also saw higher levels of deliveries to the incorrect address (neighbours) where the agent would leave the parcel unattended at the wrong premises - ironically, this still happens, but far less.

After a few months of wearing plenty of pain from these issues, we switched back to a default of Signature Required with Receiver requesting Safe Drop.

This change did not affect the ways in which the checkout functioned - a  customer is still able to change the order's Authority to Leave in the checkout to allow the parcel to be left without signature.

Receiver requesting safe drop means that once the parcel is collected from our premises and in transit (well, actually, please wait at least 6 hours as AusPost has delays in the scanning data appearing on web-facing tracking systems) the recipient (you) can request a safe drop whilst the parcel is in transit.

AusPost will send (you) the receiver a text message on the day of delivery asking if someone will be available to at the premises to sign for the parcel and the recipient can use the AusPost myPOST app to change the delivery option for safe drop.

Of course, the world of logistics is far from perfect. There are incidents that flare up regularly like delivery agents lazy and refusing to deliver parcels to a premises despite driving around all day with the parcel in their van, or they claim there was nobody home when the customer was in attendance all day - sometimes they don't even try to reach the front door, slipping collection cards in the mailbox.
 

Collection Cards

Historically, AusPost had a practice of leaving a collection card at the premises when an attempt to deliver was unsuccessful. Traditional couriers like Sendle's partners also rely upon this feature to notify a parcel delivery was attempted.

For AusPost deliveries, we have seen a declining trend of leaving collection cards.

Unfortunately, many customers are still relying upon the existence of a collection card in the letterbox and waiting for this collection card might result in your parcel sitting in the Local Post Office (LPO) for a long period.

It's important to be aware after a week or in some cases as little as 7 or 10 days, uncollected parcels will get sent (bounced) back to us via the very, very slow AusPost Return To Sender (RTS) loop that can take many weeks. Also, we (the sender) are charged another $11 on top of the original shipping charge for the RTS parcel, making it an expensive situation to re-ship your parcel.

Whilst there is no official statement, we think AusPost will gradually phase out the practice of leaving collection cards and relying upon electronic notifications. Whilst we have no proof or evidence, we can only base our assumptions upon what we see from our customers relaying their experiences.

Our advice is to never rely upon the physical presence of a collection card. Always check the electronic tracking notifications from the numerous messages you receive from AusPost.

Collection cards are also prone to risk if someone removes the card from your premises and then attempts to convince the LPO to hand over your parcel, even though it's generally requiring ID.