Australia Post forced to pay couple $3100 for failing to deliver parcels

A Melbourne couple have won a $3100 payout from Australia Post over an annoying issue that meant they didn’t get parcels for over a year.

A couple from Melbourne has won a $3100 payout from Australia Post over an annoying issue where lazy drivers repeatedly failed to deliver parcels to their home for over a year.

Wayne Short and his partner Veronica Libson, took the national postal service to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) after growing increasingly frustrated by the poor delivery service to their address.

The Eltham couple claimed Australia Post failed to deliver their parcels to their home and instead continued to deliver them to the local post office.

Cards were left at their address, instructing them to pick up the parcels at the post office, a practice known as “carding”.

Some parcels were left at the front door without their doorbell being rung, while others were flung up the external stairs to the couple’s front door.

The couple came out on top in the VCAT ruling, with Australia Post ordered to pay Mr Short and Ms Libson $3,100.50.

It found the pair spent half an hour every week attending their local post office to collect parcels that Australia Post failed to deliver.

The couple won a $3100 payout. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Mr Short said some of the parcels contained important items including medication for their daughter, who is waiting for a liver transplant, while others contained goods for their party hire business.

He told the tribunal the issue began in 2019 and the couple filed a complaint directly to Australia Post, which was not responded to.

In March 2020, the couple did renovations on their stairs and Mr Short said for a week delivery drivers couldn’t make the deliveries safely.

However, after the stairs were fixed, their parcels were still not delivered — with the driver falsely claiming they were still unsafe to climb.

Australia Post halted all parcel deliveries to the family’s home in June 2020 after Mr Short told the delivery driver he’d lodged a formal complaint with the postal service.

The driver, who had just handed Mr Short a parcel belonging to him, grabbed it from him, the tribunal found.

Mr Short grabbed his parcel from the driver and then lost his temper, yelling at the driver “get the f**k off my property”, according to the tribunal.

An Australia Post worker in Brisbane. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

After that deliveries, apart from their normal mail, stopped altogether.

The VCAT found the couple spent around 30 minutes every week for over a year collecting the parcels from the post office.

VCAT member Neill Campbell calculated the compensation of $3100 for the couple based on the half an hour travel time to the post office between June 2020 and December 2021.

Mr Campbell said the tribunal found the delivery of the parcels was “not undertaken with due care and skill” as they were “not delivered to the residential address” and there was “no basis for them not to be”.

A spokesman for Australia Post said the company respected the tribunal’s decision, according toThe Age.

Originally published as Australia Post forced to pay couple $3100 for failing to deliver parcels