My Business Portal Australia Post

[Toney Talbot]

Australia Post, together with its subsidiaries, operate as a postal company in Australia. Founded in 1809, the company offer its services to individuals, businesses, and government bodies. In 2019, Australia Post sent 3.3 billion items to 11.9 million delivery points across Australia and to more than 190 countries around the world.

The hustle and bustle normally associated with the holiday season had come early in Australia, when coronavirus lockdown measures took hold, and demand for the nation's postal services skyrocketed. Parcel tracking volumes were up 40% and authentication requests rose 70% compared with the Christmas period five months prior.

With the entire team now working from home for the first time, and more Australians than ever shopping online due to social distancing restrictions, Nette and his team needed to increase their online collaboration and adapt their ways of working. At the same time, they had to prepare and respond to a massive spike in online transactions driven by changing customer behaviour.

Changing customer behaviour wasn't the only contributing factor to the enormous transaction volumes. There was the regular lease renewal for all of Australia Post's post office boxes, which occurs annually at the end of April. Australia Post also released a new initiative to help the community during the coronavirus pandemic, which allowed pharmacies to send vulnerable customers their prescription medication through the mail network free of charge. This initiative created a surge of account registrations from pharmacies.

Nette recalls that in preparation for the massive increase in transactions, the team ran a thorough set of tests to ensure that Australia Post were ready to scale to meet this need. The same process is carried out before the Christmas peak delivery period each year.

The organisation used New Relic APM to complete a canary rollout that helped them identify pressure on Australia Post's backend, including unprecedented demand on the Small Business Portal resulting from the high uptake of the pharmaceutical delivery service.

To ensure an exceptional customer experience was maintained, Nette and his team focused on addressing errors as they emerged, while simultaneously mitigating the increased load. Primarily this was done by scaling the systems horizontally. However, they took an opportunity to implement a frontend authentication caching system which had the effect of dropping traffic to the backend by 80%. Introducing this cache allowed both backend and frontend systems to scale down the numbers of servers that were part of the authentication stack.

The number of user registrations for Australia Post's tracking system was 2.5 times higher than in February of 2020 and 30% higher than in December of 2019. The team also recorded parcel tracking numbers at three times higher when compared with February of 2020, and up 40% compared with the peak of December 2019.

Nette says that the past months have been an incredibly busy and disruptive period for Australia Post product engineering teams. It has highlighted the need for the teams to scale their applications quickly and effectively so they can significantly reduce issues that affect customers and improve the customer experience.

Nette anticipates that this year's Christmas period will surpass the April 2020 spike that Australia Post recorded. Still, he remains confident that the business's updated plans will place Australia Post in a strong position going forward.

For Australia Post, New Relic have been a long-term, strategic partner, Nette says, recalling that the working relationship began five years ago to 'dip their toes' into microservices architecture. Today, Nette and his teams work closely with New Relic as an integral part of the team.

Scam warning: The ACCC is aware that scammers have been calling people, falsely claiming to help them get a refund. They may be using this media release about Australia Post refunds to convince you that it is real. Australia Post Group will not provide clickable links or phone numbers and will not ask for email or text message responses. If you receive a call from anyone offering to help you with a refund, hang up immediately. Never give personal information to anyone calling you out of the blue and never give access to your computer or bank account. If you have given information to a scammer or lost money, contact your bank immediately. Report scams to Scamwatch.

Australia Post and its subsidiary StarTrack have admitted they likely engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct when they failed to accept compensation requests and incorrectly advised some business customers that no compensation was payable to them for lost or damaged articles for four years until October 2022.

In a court-enforceable undertaking accepted by the ACCC, Australia Post and StarTrack (together, Australia Post Group) have undertaken to provide compensation for lost or damaged parcels to about 10,500 affected business contract customers and fewer than 1,000 recipients of StarTrack deliveries.

Under the consumer guarantee rights in the Australian Consumer Law, consumers can request a remedy if a product is not of acceptable quality or a service is not performed with due care and skill, fit for purpose or supplied within a reasonable time.

The law exempts certain transport services for the purpose of a business. In October 2018, that exemption was amended with the effect that from that time, consumer guarantee rights applied to the transport of goods to a recipient who is not carrying on a business in relation to the goods.

Between 26 October 2018 and 31 October 2022, Australia Post Group failed to accept some compensation requests from business contract customers for lost and damaged articles. It also incorrectly advised some business contract customers that no compensation was payable to them.

Many business customers will automatically receive compensation. The Australia Post and StarTrack websites will explain who is eligible for compensation and whether they will need to take action. The websites will also feature a claims portal through which to lodge a claim.

Australia Post Group will not provide clickable links or phone numbers and will not ask for email or text message responses, as these are methods that are frequently used by scammers. Customers should report these to Scamwatch.

It will directly contact around 10,500 business contract customers and fewer than 1,000 receivers of StarTrack deliveries it has identified as potentially affected, and will provide them with automatic remediation or a unique reference number and instructions on how to lodge a claim.

Business customers who made claims for compensation from Australia Post Group for lost or damaged articles between 26 October 2018 and 31 October 2022 will be contacted within 2 weeks and invited to submit claims, or will receive automatic remediation.

Eligible customers may receive a credit to their account with Australia Post Group, a credit to their nominated bank account, or be sent a cheque. If the cheque is returned to sender or not deposited within 12 months, the amount will be paid into a state or territory unclaimed monies fund.

Non-business customers, whose articles are lost or damaged, may have rights to receive compensation under consumer guarantees. Consumers who have questions about their experiences with Australia Post can contact (03) 9640 1791.

Australia Post is a Commonwealth government-owned corporation. StarTrack is a wholly owned subsidiary of Australia Post. Australia Post and StarTrack provide postal services to consumers and business contract customers.

The ACCC acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands across Australia on which we live and work. We acknowledge their connection to this Country and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

But I'm struggling to work out how I do it in eBay and Australia post my Business portal. I don't see a postage policy for this in eBay and when I go to Australia Post and enter the size and weight e.g. 15cm x 20cm x 1.6CM, it comes out at like $8.00.

This shift presented considerable challenges for both retailers and consumers. Consumers were strategic with their purchases and showed a hesitancy to spend, particularly on non-essential items. For the first time in five years, non-discretionary spend growth outpaced discretionary spend growth5.

Retailers did their best to adapt. Some adopted long-term initiatives to drive down costs and improve productivity, while others offered deeper discounting in the short term to manage inventory and boost foot traffic.

Looking ahead, interest rate adjustments, moderating inflation6, predicted income growth7 and stage three tax cuts are expected to ease economic challenges and enhance consumer spending power by an estimated $50 billion in FY 20257. Coupled with population growth, these factors are anticipated to drive overall growth and provide some relief for retailers by the end of 2024.

As people looked for better deals, Variety Stores, especially Online Marketplaces, saw a surge in online spending, up by 9.1%8. The only other type of store to see growth in 2023 was Food & Liquor, mostly because more people were buying groceries online.

Consumers and retailers embraced digital retail channels for convenience. Shoppers increasingly favoured eCommerce platforms, marking a shift towards a digital-first approach in consumer shopping behaviour.

Buy now pay later (BNPL) payments grew in popularity in 2017. Afterpay reached 2.3 million customers by the middle of 201810. By December 2017, Amazon entered the arena, driving even greater growth in online retailing.

eCommerce underwent a major transformation driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a significant surge in online shopping. By September 2021, online spending reached its peak with 1 in 4 retail dollars being spent online, making eCommerce an integral aspect of daily life.

Repeat purchasing intensified, as the number of purchases per household went up. Households that shopped 26-51 times a year increased by 2% while the group of most frequent shoppers, who made over 52 purchases annually, increased by 1%.

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