All signed, sealed and undelivered

Since we’re wrapping up the festive season and I’m still holding on to some feelings of good will, I’d like to offer a spot of free advice to NZ Post: if you have a help form on your website, make sure the damn thing works. 

A while back I bought something on Trade Me. Nothing unusual about that you might think. And you’d be right. 

However, it never turned up. 

I know $40 isn’t a lot of money but I wasn’t prepared to chuck it away — so eventually, the seller went to NZ Post’s site and filled in the details on the customer inquiry form to report the package was missing. 

A few days later, when neither of us had received any form of response from NZ Post, I went to the site and filled in the same form. Again, there was no response. 

Now, it’s about here that some of you might be thinking “why not just go into your nearest Post Shop and start the inquiry process”. 

However, at this time of the year the last place I want to be spending my time is in a slow-moving queue at my local Post Shop — no offence to the staff there, I’m sure you are all lovely blokes and blokesses, but it’s an incredibly busy time of the year. 

Besides, NZ Post isn’t some tinpot fly-by-night operation and I would have thought that it was safe to expect a company that size to have a fully functional website. 

My next move was to go back to the NZ Post website and send a rather terse e-mail, asking why I was being ignored. This time I bypassed the help-you’ve-lost-my-parcel form and went direct to the normal contact us links. 

Sadly, I’m still being ignored. I’m not sure if I should be taking this personally or if NZ Post simply ignores everyone who has the audacity to try to make contact via the internet but either way, I’m not a happy camper. 

A year or so ago I started an inquiry via phone about the failed delivery of a package from the courier division and that one was also ignored. Hmm, maybe I should be taking this personally. 

I’m sure NZ Post’s profits have been boosted because of the huge number of Trade Me parcels whizzing around the country so surely it’s time to embrace the internet and make sure the website actually works.