A Flaxmere woman spent months fighting for answers after her home video system showed a New Zealand Post courier failing to deliver her parcel.
Lisa Farrell received an apology and an offer of compensation from NZ Post this week, but she’s still scratching her head about what made the courier drive past, U-turn back, park in her driveway, and then still not deliver it.
Farrell ordered a package of meteorites and tektites, worth about $200, in July to make a necklace with, as a birthday present for her daughter.
But she discovered in September that the package had been marked as delivered in August.
“I had a look at my camera footage thinking someone had stolen it, only to see the postie drive past, come back, then pull into my driveway and sit there doing something in their cart for about a minute,” Farrell said.
A few seconds after the cart pulled out of the driveway, the package was marked as delivered according to its tracking history.
She sent the video footage to NZ Post via its website in early September.
A month later, NZ Post told her that the postie was unable to obtain GPS coordinates at the time of delivery, and there was an image captured of the parcel left at an open front door.
It took until November 2 for NZ Post to review her video and confirm with the delivery agent the package could not be recalled.
Farrell was advised to go to the sender to make a claim, but the sender told her that the package was still marked as ‘delivered’ and they could not make a claim unless it was changed to ‘missing’.
Despite emails to NZ Post, they had not changed the designation on the package to ‘missing’ as of Monday.
On Thursday, NZ Post general manager service delivery Matthew Riordan told Hawke’s Bay Today that Farrell had not received the service that NZ Post prided itself on.
He said their customer advocacy manager had reached out to Farrell directly to resolve this matter, removing the need for a change of designation.
“NZ Post wishes to sincerely apologise to Lisa for her recent experience. Unfortunately, it appears we have incorrectly delivered Lisa’s parcel,” Riordan said.
Farrell said she was thankful for the apology from NZ Post and an offer to directly refund the package as a one-off goodwill gesture.
She said she was still very disappointed that it took so long for NZ Post to process her complaint and admit fault when she first provided video evidence more than three months ago.
“In the video, they sit in the driveway and then you can see them going back and forth on the street and it looks like they are looking for something. They know they misdelivered it, so why did they mark it as delivered and how?”
Riordan said NZ Post staff work hard to deliver all parcels quickly, safely and correctly and while most of the time this was achieved, a loss could sometimes occur.
“In these situations, we have processes in place to locate the item and where this is not possible, to pay compensation as appropriate.”
He said because the contract for delivery was with the postal authority of the sender for international parcels, any claim for compensation needed to be initiated by the sender with their postal authority.
“This arrangement allows the sender of an item to lodge a claim with their postal authority, even in instances where the parcel has been scanned delivered, but the delivery is disputed.”
He said NZ Post encourages customers who do not receive a parcel they are expecting to contact their Customer Care Centre via its website nzpost.co.nz or by phoning 0800 501 501.
“If people receive an item which has been delivered in error, they can also contact us and we will arrange to collect the item and redeliver it.”