We have an ongoing problem with
Australia Post and the delivery of our mail. Ever since we moved into our new unit a few months ago our mail occasionally gets delivered to the wrong address. It ends up at another address with the same unit number and same street number but it's the wrong street. We only know this because the people who live at the other address have been kind enough to forward our email to the correct address. But I have no guarantee that all of our mail has been safely forwarded. Our street is clearly marked at both ends and the street number is easy to spot. I have rung Australia Post on four occasions now but the problem persists. They promise to fix the situation but it still happens. Actually, the other day we received mail that was meant for the people in the other street, so the problem seems to be getting worse. Each time I've called I've also requested that the local manager contact me once action has been taken and even though I'm told I will get a call I never have. Reliable mail delivery should be something that we can all take for granted but it's frustrating to have the uncertainty that you never know if you will miss out on some important piece of mail.
The company that I have the most problems with has got to be
Telstra. I can remember a few years ago when I got my first mobile phone it was late arriving and when I did it was the wrong handset. It took another couple of weeks to get the correct handset but they were already charging me for the phone service from the date I was supposed to get the handset rather than from when I actually received the handset three weeks later. Then there was the problem we had when we moved a couple of years ago. We organised the new connection a few weeks in advance so that we could be sure that the phone would be connected the day we moved in. So when we moved in of course there was no phone. It actually took a few days for them to work out what had happened because they were sure it had been connected. After several phone calls I finally got to speak to somebody with some initiative who traced the request and discovered that the manual transfer of the request from one Telstra system to another Telstra system resulted in the wrong address being entered. I wonder if the people at the other address ever knew what happened to their phone connection. The latest problem has to do where their online billing system. I signed up months ago but none of my bills were appearing online. After a few phone calls they gave up and had to reset my account and I had to wait another month to see if it was working this time. In the meantime we never received our latest posted bill (maybe that was Australia Posts fault) but eventually got the overdue notice. So I paid it straight away and now two weeks later when I look at my bills online it says the last two still require payment. I know it has been paid because they charged my credit card. Their online billing and payment system looks nice and is easy to use, but it seems to have a few problems that still need to be sorted out.
Lastly, we had an interesting exchange with Sydney's Baby Kingdom (in Bankstown) this weekend. We bought a pram (and some other baby accessories) from them several weeks ago and went to fold it up and put it in the car for the first time this weekend. As soon as we went to do this we noticed that one of the zippers was broken. This was disappointing as we had paid several hundred dollars for a good pram that we planned to get a lot of use out of. So we rang up straight away and explained that the pram was broken and we wanted to bring it in and have it replaced. The first person we spoke to gave us some story about needing to have it checked out by their repairman and he doesn't work on the weekend so we would have to bring it in during the week, and we would possibly have to do without the pram for two weeks. They also told us they were out of stock of the model we had so couldn't just swap it. This is a brand new pram that we need to be using now! So we rang back five minutes later and a different person answered the phone. This time they told us that they did have some in stock (hey, I thought they were out of stock) and that we could bring it in straight away, but they would still need to check it out and might need to keep it in for repair. When we got there 45 minutes later they were a lot more helpful and didn't even look at the zipper. They grabbed another pram, but rather than give us the new one they insisted on swapping just the lining with the broken zipper. We figured this would be ok as long as it was all working when we left the store. As they were unpacking the new pram it was at this point we realised that they hadn't sold us a brand new pram in the first place. Either it was a demo model or one that somebody else had previously returned because it was never packed as well as the new one that they were unpacking. Some of the pieces on our pram were already assembled which had to be assembled on the new pram. And we also discovered that a couple of straps and springs were also missing on our original pram that were on the new pram. It's very frustrating to be sold something that you are led to believe is brand new but is actually used and somebody has deliberately repacked the item so that you wouldn't even know that it had been opened. Not until we discovered the broken zipper and then got to watch another pram being unpacked did we realise what had happened. This is very dodgy and I feel like reporting it. I'm relieved to have a complete pram now and hopefully we never have to deal with Sydney's Baby Kingdom again.