More than 1000 letters or packages sent through New Zealand Post are reported lost in the mail every week, and the service has paid more than $450,000 to affected customers in the past year.
Figures obtained by the Herald show 55,087 reported cases of undelivered mail, 6045 more than theyear before. Of those, 678 were cheques.
NZ Post paid $452,235.62 to 5580 customers - including for 20 of the missing cheques - who did not receive mail, according to figures received under the Official Information Act.
NZ Post said the cases were initially logged with its customer service centre but sometimes items were eventually delivered or found so it was unable to give accurate figures on how many were traced and how many were never seen again.
A spokeswoman for the service said 834.5 million items were delivered in the year to June 30, an average of 16 million a week.
One letter in every 15,000 went missing - .007 per cent of the total mail volume, she said.
"Your request provided a really interesting insight into the common excuse that the cheque someone was supposed to send must have got lost in the mail."
