By EMMA SUN
Residents stamp their feet over no home deliveries…
EMPTY letterboxes, missed notices, late bills and returned packages.
This is the situation many Cockatoo residents face as part of a long-standing agreement with Australia Post, where mail is bulk-dropped at the post office in lieu of home deliveries.
Some residents have complained that their mail may as well have a permanent “return to sender” sticker because there have been numerous cases where letters and packages were picked up by the wrong person or lost.
Nathalie Goerke-Childs, who lives on Neville Street, said she has heard every story under the sun about the negative aspects of not having mail delivery.
“Those that do want mail delivery don’t feel like they’ve been heard – they might be in the minority, but they also feel like they haven’t got the option to change for the future,” she said.
“We’ve had a real estate agent comment that she would be able to deliver more advertising material and better service in terms of real estate and values going up if they could deliver the mail.
“One man said he had a surgery offered to him and wasn’t able to get the letter because he didn’t collect mail that week and it had been returned to the sender.”
Local Helen Verheij said she has also had problems with mail collection, with one particular incident related to her daughter’s football club membership package that had gone missing, and was sent to the father of her daughter rather than her.
She said she has also had trouble with eBay purchases.
“Last year October I bought something from EBay and did not receive it,” she said.
“I queried the seller, Australia Post and the local post office several times.
“Nothing showed up, the seller was adamant that she sent it to me in a padded envelope and this year in May when I picked up my mail I was handed a padded envelope that looked like it had been trodden on as it had shoe prints on it and was dirty.
“On opening I found the item I bought in October.
“I checked the post stamp and it was sent to me on the said date the seller informed me of.
“I hate to think that it was in Cockatoo Post Office all that time kicked under something.”
While Australia Post has conducted mail polls for “eligible residents” to gauge whether people wanted home deliveries, many are furious that those who don’t respond are considered as a “no”, rather than not included in the statistics.
Jenny Halkier, who lives on Bilocka Avenue, said she thought Australia Post was finding the “easy way out” to endorse non-returns as a “no”.
“It’s a real cop out,” she said.
“Try making it the other way around, and we would all be enjoying home delivery by now.”
Australia Post is currently conducting a mail poll for residents in a pocket within Cockatoo that is bounded, but not serviced, by a rural mail delivery contractor.
Ms Goerke-Childs is urging residents who are keen on getting mail delivery to fill in the form and return it to Australia Post.
The poll closes on Friday 5 July.
Anyone wishing to get more information can contact the Australia Post Customer Contact Centre on 13 13 18.
