Australia Post predicts parcel delivery days leading up to Christmas

Australia Post has provided an honest and blunt warning leading into the busy period for Christmas deliveries – get your letters to Santa written early.

Santa, in case you’re reading, Australia Post has issued a warning for continued delays as the escalated demand caused by consumers relying on online shopping shows no sign of abating.

The extraordinary trading conditions created by the coronavirus pandemic has caused parcel delivery numbers to surge 200 per cent, resulting in well-documented delays.

And as warmer weather sets in ahead of the busy Christmas season, Australia Post executive manager Gary Starr advised consumers to “plan early”.

Modern shopping patterns now focus on online shopping events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which will add extreme strain on the already struggling delivery network.

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Get those presents ready!

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“We will be publishing Christmas cut-off dates in the next week – both to our retailers and merchants and clearly to the public,” Mr Starr told Channel 7’s The Morning Show.

“(The cut-off) will be late November to early December.

“What I do expect is that during that cyber sale period from mid-November into early December will be the main Christmas shopping period this year.

“I urge people to plan and plan early. Who knows what Christmas will bring. Last Christmas brought the bushfires and floods and we were just coming off our busiest period and then the pandemic hit.

“We have planned as much as we can with our customers – and they are also struggling with bringing in inventory and merchandise to sell.

“Planning is the bottom line.”

The announcement comes after exasperated consumers complained of parcels being redirected thousands of kilometres as Australia Post grapples with the logistic issues from the stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne.

Some packages are clocking up to 1500km of unnecessary travel to reach their buyer.

The Age reported some parcels ordered by Victorians, which were housed in the state, were going “the long way round”. One parcel reportedly went to Adelaide then ended up back in Geelong while another was diverted between Oakleigh and Preston.

Many went through Sydney before reaching their final destination, back in the state of Victoria.

Melbourne’s postal distribution centres have been cut by 10 per cent as part of the State Government’s measures to combat the virus. But with increased demand, they’re struggling to keep up.

As a result, the parcels are being sent interstate for sorting, and are then making their way back into locked-down Victoria.

“The demand is just massive at the moment,” Gary Starr, a spokesperson for Australia Post, told The Age.

Australia Post revealed it had experienced a 157 per cent growth in Victoria in the first week of August (when the stage 4 lockdown was announced) compared to last year.

The postal company estimated that more than a third of all online shopping purchases around the country were coming from Victoria.

To manage the influx of parcels with fewer people, Australia Post is running split shifts around the clock while conducting regular deep cleans.