‘Diabolical’ Covid-19 mail disruptions cause Christmas headaches for NZ Post

The 260 overseas parcels lodged with NZ Post before the Christmas deadline are no longer stuck in New Zealand, and may make it to their destination before the tree comes down.

Last week, NZ Post admitted that hundreds of presents were still sitting at NZ Post’s International Mail Centre despite customers arranging for them to be sent overseas on time.

Rachel Holland paid $64 to send a Christmas package by international courier to Brisbane on November 7, a month before the cut-off date.

The parcel finally arrived in Brisbane on December 29, instead of the advertised three to 10 days, having apparently sat in limbo at NZ Post’s Auckland international mail centre since December 10.

READ MORE:
* NZ Post admits about 260 gifts ‘sent’ on time won’t make it overseas for Christmas
* Gifts spend weeks stuck in transit: ‘It would have to be on Santa’s sleigh to get it there’
* NZ Post brings forward Christmas delivery dates due to expected Covid-19 delays

But it still had not been delivered to her parents the next day.

”I fully understand the effects that Covid is having on freight and post,” Holland said.

“My issue is that NZ Post is a national organisation specialising in freight movement and delivery; they manage logistics and should be aware at any time of the flow of items in their care.”

She said NZ Post should have provided more frequent updates about international mail services, and communicated better with customers.

Another customer, Del Pouwels, paid $255 for international courier for a parcel to Ireland on December 2, before the deadline. The parcel had been ‘in transit with airline’ eight times, but 27 days later had not arrived.

NZ Post general manager of international solutions Murray Silcock apologised for the 260 parcels left behind, and said they had since been sent overseas. They were overlooked as other mail got in front, and were not discovered until NZ Post reviewed its process.

“We genuinely try as hard as we can, we work very hard to get products where they’re supposed to go and normally we do a good job of it.

“Obviously this time with the process error that’s not great, that’s not what we plan to do, and we can only apologise to those people who’ve been affected by it.”

There could potentially be a further 50 to 100 parcels caught up in other areas, he said.

“I wouldn’t say there’s that many more than the ones we’ve identified, but it’s that time of the year that a parcel could have got caught up in some part of somebody’s network.”

As of Tuesday, the oldest overseas parcels sitting with NZ Post were ones posted on December 23.

Fewer planes flying into and out of New Zealand thanks to the coronavirus pandemic was creating headaches for NZ Post, at a time when it was dealing with heavy volumes of parcels.

NZ Post has struggled with logistical problems since February, when China was affected by the Covid-19 outbreak. Things became more hectic in New Zealand’s first lockdown before the situation improved, but other countries were still dealing with lockdowns.

“It’s diabolical,” Silcock said.

NZ Post knew the Christmas season would be difficult, and made its cut-off dates earlier than usual.

“I think we were pretty clear in most of our literature that we can’t guarantee anything, but if you sent it before those cut-off dates … we were pretty confident that you’d get delivered.”

In the UK, Royal Mail was typically clearing items in 24 to 48 hours across the border, so there were no significant delays there, Silcock said.

He was confident that Christmas presents sent by the deadline would by and large have got to their destination. Customers had followed the advice of sending early, he said.

“I think generally we did very well, with the exception of that error that had some of those parcels caught up. And mostly we’ve found all sorts of creative ways to move stuff over this time.

“Normally pre-Covid, we had a contract with Air NZ and one with Cathay Pacific, now we’ll take volume capacity wherever we can find it, and we’ll route through various ways.

“We had a contingency we didn’t quite need to use that would have routed into China and used their Belt and Road.

“I think all logisticians around the world have got quite creative about how to move stuff nowadays.”

If NZ Post had known there would be such high volumes of parcels being sent overseas, it would have chartered flights earlier than it did.

“Normally we’re a lot more planned in our approach but Covid has made it incredibly difficult to plan – volumes are way more different than you’d expect, and airline capacity is very hard to come by.”

A sea service was likely to be added to the mix next Christmas, which would be cheaper and produce fewer emissions but would take longer. A test run was planned for February or March.