Just before Christmas I ordered these gorgeous letterpress Christmas Animals cards1 from The Distillery.
I received a very nice email almost immediately advising “I have popped them straight in the post for you!”.
And then I waited and waited and waited some more for the cards to arrive.
Christmas came and went.
Then I waited even more.
Finally on 4 January, I received a plastic envelope imprinted with the Australia Post logo and the following text:
“The enclosed was found to be either loose in the mail or damaged whilst being processed.
Employees at the facility make every effort to correctly handle the millions of mail articles posted each day to ensure they are delivered on time and in good condition.
However, as the facility uses mechanised equipment to process most of this mail, occasional damage may occur. This may be due to a machine malfunction or because an article was not properly sealed or contained bulky material.
We appreciate your concern and offer our apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced.”
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“Oh No!” I thought, “my gorgeous cards might be all mangled!”.
I opened the plastic envelope, then the actual addressed envelope to find … nothing.
The contents were gone.
I called Australia Post who could do not-a-great-deal. No, there would be no compensation for the missing articles. They suggested I call in a couple of weeks to see if the cards have turned up in the unaddressed mail / loose articles section, but they were not terribly confident.
I take little comfort that they have apologised for any inconvenience, but fortunately, I’m only out $15.
1Cicada, Xmas Beetle, Prawn – excellent!