Australia Post accused of almost ruining wedding day after marriage documents went missing

A COUPLE say their wedding day was almost in tatters after vital marriage paperwork went missing in the post.

Con and Michelle Cominos on their wedding day in Emerald on October 31 last year.

IN THE week before her wedding day Michelle Cominos should have been putting the finishing touches to the venue, welcoming guests from near and far and looking forward to a new chapter in her life.

Instead, she just “cried and cried,” says her husband Con who puts the blame squarely on Australia Post, accusing them of sending vital paperwork for the couple’s wedding day not only to the wrong address but to the wrong state.

The pair estimate the costs for the Greek orthodox ceremony, including travel arrangements for the guests, was upwards of $25,000 but it was all at risk due to the wayward $13 parcel.

Australia Post has said it is stumped as to how a parcel intended for a priest in Brisbane ended up languishing in a post office box in Sydney. But it has discovered the Sydney address was for a Greek Church.

The publicly-owned body has been under intense scrutiny in the last month since it announced it would charge some customers for holding undelivered parcels in post offices. In recent days, Australia Post has also had to defend claims its automated systems are sending parcels on unnecessarily epic interstate road trips in the wrong direction.

Mr Cominos, from Emerald in central Queensland, told news.com.au his nuptial nightmares began in September 2015 when he sent the couple’s notice of intended marriage documentation to an orthodox priest in Brisbane via Australia Post’s Express Post Platinum service.

The pair hoped to have an orthodox ceremony but with no priest of that denomination in the regional town they had planned to fly the minister in.

“The law says we’ve got to have paperwork in one month and one day before the wedding so we sent it on 18 September which was well and truly a month before.”

But by the middle of October the vital wedding documents hadn’t arrived.

“He rang us the week before and said where’s the paperwork? I can’t marry you without it,” said Mr Cominos.

The envelope, bound for Brisbane, ended up in a post office box in Sydney. Picture: Monique Nevison

TRAUMA

With only days to go before the wedding, the desperate pair asked Australia Post to find their marriage documents only to discover they had ended up 1500km from where they were posted and were now in Parramatta, western Sydney.

“Platinum Post is supposed to deliver in three days outside metro areas and it was delivered in three days, but to Parramatta not Brisbane,” said Mr Cominos.

“It had the priest’s name on it and an address in Mount Gravatt. How on earth can you get Parramatta, Sydney, out of that? It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.”

The missing marriage paperwork meant it was now illegal for them to wed.

“It caused my wife a lot of trauma,” said Mr Cominos. “She broke down and just cried and cried you’ve got these a***holes denying everything and then they add insult to injury to only give me a lousy $13 to make up for it.”

Mr Cominos said delaying the big day would have meant cancelling the hotel as well as airline flights and the reception.

“Everything would have been thrown out the door. We couldn’t have booked again for months afterwards and everything would have cost more and more.

“If the CEO can get $2m they can afford to compensate my wife for the trauma caused.”

With 70 guests about to arrive in Emerald, the couple had to act fast and headed to a local magistrate, successfully persuading them they should be granted special dispensation due to the mail debacle.

But the delay meant they now had no priest. Thinking on their feet they called a nearby minister who, despite being from a different denomination, agreed to perform an orthodox ceremony.

“A local paster did some quick homework, had a look at YouTube, got the gist of how to do the orthodox service and just worked it out,” Mr Cominos said.

“Australia Post almost ruined my wedding day.”

Michelle ‘cried and cried’ over the drama of the missing documents.

PARCELS DOING LAPS OF AUSTRALIA

The organisation has had to fend off claims in recent days that its automated systems are failing to recognise addresses and are sending parcels on long journeys around the country, even when they are posted in one suburb for delivery to the next.

“Earlier this year I sent an artwork from Collingwood to South Yarra [in Melbourne] and it went via western Sydney then Perth then Sunshine [Victoria]. Took 13 business days. Should have just driven it myself,” cartoonist Oslo Davis told Fairfax Media on Wednesday.

Australia Post said 94 per cent of mail was delivered on time.

Talking to news.com.au, a spokeswoman said the Platinum Post service, used by Mr Cominos, was not fully automated and four different staff members would have seen the envelope on its journey to Parramatta.

An investigation had shown that the parcel was indeed delivered to Parramatta but it was a mystery how, if it was addressed to Brisbane, it could have gone on such a detour. However, the PO box address was for a Greek Church.

Speaking to news.com.au, Mr Cominos said it was the first he had heard of the package going to a Greek Church. In fact he had called an Orthodox church in the Sydney suburb months ago on the off chance the envelope was there — it wasn’t he said.

He insisted the parcel was correctly addressed and there was no mix up from his end. “Neither my wife or I have any connection with Parramatta. I have asked the priest several times to confirm the parish office had no connection with Parramatta nor were there any redirects.

“I know the incompetence of Australia Post because I used to work there and the amount of undelivered mail was beyond belief,” he said. “When I was growing up Australia Post could be relied upon, but not anymore.”

Last week, delivery staff were accused of not doing their job after CCTV footage emerged of a driver placing a collection card on a customer’s door but making no attempt to deliver the actual parcel.

Frustrated customer Billy Tang labelled the organisation “Australia Never Posts” and said “Is it that hard to knock on the door or pressing the doorbell?”

Public sentiment towards the organisation has been damaged by a plan to charge customers up to $9 to pick up parcels from post offices if they can’t be delivered to their home address and they remain uncollected for five days.

Australia Post said 92 per cent of parcels were collected within five days and would continue to be fee-free under the new proposals.

Many have said if Australia Post made more of an effort to deliver parcels in the first place people wouldn’t have to pick them up from post offices.

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