When a courier won’t provide the service they’re contracted to provide, there’s a raft of downstream impacts.

Further to my article on the lazy-assed, vindictive New Zealand Post courier – a situation still not resolved by their equally lazy-assed, ineffective “Area Service Manager” (some “service”), here are just some of the impacts to some of the individuals and businesses downstream:

1)   With regard to the courier’s unwillingness to take the simple and responsible action of closing a gate i.e. through which one’s pet can easily walk out onto a road that would-be Arton Senna boy racers use as their local La Mans practice venue (as they do in multiple locations throughout Masterton):

When the dog next door pays his occasional unbidden visit (which I have absolutely no problem with) through some yet-to-become-apparent hole in the fence, he too is at risk of escaping. So now the neighbour has to repair the fence, as their more adventurous dog would certainly take advantage of an open gate if he saw it over here.

2)   Now the neighbour is concerned that the courier might not shut their gate.

3)   Whenever I want to buy something on TradeMe, or from any other source, I have to place a question, engage in otherwise unnecessary emails, or make otherwise unnecessary phone calls, to ask if the seller uses New Zealand Post couriers by default, and if so, can they please not use NZ Post couriers.

Sometimes the seller or company in question is happy to oblige, but sometimes they're working within the confines of automated processes and/or they have an account with NZ Post Couriers and they therefore have to go through NZ Post. In those cases, I now usually refrain from the purchase.

4)   Impact (3) above causes further logistical problems for me e.g. one of the companies I buy a lot from is HealthPost. There is no real health food / vitamin store in the Wairarapa. So I have to either wait until my next trip to Wellington, or find other reasons to justify a trip to Wellington, just to buy supplements that are readily purchasable online, and which are considerably cheaper through HealthPost, the company I’ve bought from for many years.

5)   HealthPost and other sellers/suppliers lose business because of a recalcitrant NZ Post courier, and a system that doesn’t assume any responsibility for them, and that has a complaints department that doesn’t do anything about complaints. Nor does its local outlet.

So, for every one customer who experiences problems with a courier company the contractors of which won’t perform the simple, core and most basic responsibility for which they are contracted and paid (not least of all, by the actual, primary customer), there are multiple downstream impacted parties.

But does New Zealand Post care? I don't believe they do. Frankly, as far as my experience of their local representation goes, I don't think they give a shit.