She had sold some clothes on Facebook and paid for the packages to be collected and sent from her local Four Square by NZ Post courier.
She does this several times a month, usually without incident.
But by April 6, the buyer of Baird’s clothes – two packages for $100 each – had contacted her to say they had not arrived, and the tracking number showed the parcels as “collected from sender”, with no updates past March 28.
That’s when she started to worry.
Initially, Baird returned to the Four Square to find out what had happened.
After staff reviewed CCTV footage, they told Baird they viewed her paying for the courier and the NZ Post worker collecting that day’s packages.
They apologised to Baird but said ultimately it was out of their control.
“Of course, that’s when the drama started – when [the parcel] left the shop and went into the abyss of nowhere,” she said.
Baird contacted NZ Post and logged a claim, but it did not help find and send her missing packages.
“I got a pretty stock standard generic email back saying this has been transferred to our investigations team, and then basically just radio silence,” she said.
That’s when she saw a post on a Napier community social media page from a man named Mark Muir.
He, too, had sent packages on March 28 that disappeared.
Muir told Hawke’s Bay Today he usually sends one package a week but had sent six parcels with NZ Post on March 28, all of which went missing.
Under Muir’s post, affected people from Hastings, Napier, and Central Hawke’s Bay joined in the complaint chorus.
All said the packages sent via NZ Post on March 28 had failed to arrive at their destinations.
Hawke’s Bay Today spoke with 10 of those commenters three weeks after March 28.
All of them said their packages were still missing, and they had not heard anything from NZ Post after they made claims online.
They were all rather annoyed.
Hawke’s Bay Today then put their claims to NZ Post and asked why there were so many of them.
After three working days, punctuated by Easter, the mystery was solved.
A spokesperson said they had investigated and were “pleased to have solved the mystery”.
They had now found and sent all of the lost packages.
“A container containing the Hawke’s Bay area parcels was mislabelled in our processing centre, and unfortunately, this means the parcels have been delayed.
“We are now processing these parcels immediately, and they will be out for delivery as soon as possible.
“We wish to apologise to our customers for this inconvenience and wish to assure customers we are working hard to get these parcels processed and delivered as soon as we can.
“NZ Post wishes to thank the Hawke’s Bay Today for bringing this issue to our attention.”
The NZ Post spokesperson said there would be no compensation offered to senders as the packages will be delivered, “albeit delayed”.
“However, we may be able to refund the cost of postage,” they said.
“If that’s the case, then we would contact impacted customers directly.”
Baird was not amused by NZ Post’s response and lack of communication with those who lodged complaints over the past month.
“The service from NZ Post is pretty s**t,” she said.
“They didn’t seem to care and kept fobbing you off like basically ‘not our problem’.”
Baird said she could not work out why her initial complaint did not trigger NZ Post’s attention earlier, when so many customers were complaining of the missing parcels from the same day and area.
Muir said the fact NZ Post had found the parcels was “all very nice”, but he and other people affected had started making inquiries three weeks earlier.
“It just seems to me that nothing actually happened until [Hawke’s Bay Today] contacted them," he said.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the past 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.
