Yahoo Finance Australia Post delivered gifts worth $600 arrive 'shredded'
A woman was disgusted after several Christmas presents arrived completely destroyed when she mailed them with Australia Post.
Debbie Martin lives in Katoomba, NSW and was excited to send her daughter and her partner, who live in Queensland, carefully chosen presents but when the package arrived it came with a letter from Australia Post explaining the parcel had been damaged.
Not only were gifts like shirts, underwear and a handbag totally shredded but several items were missing from the parcel, including aftershave.
Ms Martin told Yahoo News Australia she had spent approximately $600 on the gifts.
When she posted photos of the destroyed items on Facebook people were flabbergasted at the state they had arrived in.
“Looks like a couple of rottweilers were fighting over it,” one person said.
“Good Lord, did it go through a tree mulching machine?” another person wrote.
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“It begs the question, how on earth does a parcel get to this state?” a user asked.
According to Australia Post Ms Martin’s parcel was damaged “by machinery” but they didn’t elaborate further.
“The things that went missing were ladies underwear, men's socks, and aftershave. These things totally disappeared.
“I thought that maybe the aftershave got broken but nothing smells of it and it was wrapped in bubble wrap and inside the men's socks,” Ms Martin explained.
She told Yahoo News that she wasn’t offered insurance when mailing the items at the post office and even requested the parcel be sent straight to her daughter’s local post office to be picked up.
“I wanted her to have to pick it up at the post office and they said it was a good idea and printed out some kind of sticker to put on the parcel, which I had to sign it and they said it would be safer this way,” she said.
When the presents arrived destroyed, Ms Martin raised a complaint with Australia Post and she was informed because the parcel didn’t have extra cover, they could only compensate her up to $100.
Ms Martin wasn’t satisfied and took the matter to the ombudsman who offered her a goodwill gesture of $250 plus $28.45 for the postage cost.
Given the extreme amount of damage caused by Australia Post’s equipment, Ms Martin isn’t prepared to accept the goodwill gesture and is still looking for answers.
An Australia Post spokesperson told Yahoo News while the vast majority of mail arrives “safely and on time, something has clearly gone wrong here.”
Australia Post apologised for the matter and urged Ms Martin to contact them again.
“We have sought to work with the customer regarding this matter and advised that even though insurance was not taken out on the items, compensation was and remains available as a gesture of goodwill, and we encourage the customer to contact us.”
“That’s disgusting... seriously how could they pull a blind eye to that amount of destruction?” a Facebook user wrote.
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