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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : NZ Post might kill my website....
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TassyJim Guru  Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6283 |
Most of our local post offices are privately run and part of a newsagent or supermarket. Aust Post don't pay them much and there are regular fears of some of the agencies closing. I am glad we got roadside delivery about 10 years ago 'cos we would have no hope of getting it now. Living out of the big smoke does have advantages. On the morning walk with the dogs, you can stick to the middle of the road. Sometimes the milk tanker comes along and you have to shift to one side but that's about the biggest excitement for the day. I do know it take the ambulance about 12 minutes to get here. That's probably faster than for most city dwellers. Jim VK7JH MMedit |
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palcal Guru Joined: 12/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1993 |
Don't worry too much Grogs I think they are switching to Drones. Paul. "It is better to be ignorant and ask a stupid question than to be plain Stupid and not ask at all" |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2950 |
GDay Grogs, My PO is probably 5km from me.. But you have to try to find a car park in a packed shopping centre (I have a rather bulky VAN) and then queue up for up to 30minutes (queue is often well out the door).. I gave up on PO a long time ago.. I have a post box about 500m away and all of my shipping is either packed in a standard envelope (if just PCBs) or in a small packet of 16mm thick (same size as a small envelope but thicker).. these can have 250gm (or is it 500gm) for a measly $2 in AUS or if I send OS it is the same as a letter at $3.00 if weight under 50gm (That is a bit tough to keep to meet but I can send 3 x 50Gm packets for the same price as 1 heavier packet -- $9.00 over 50gm--). I don't bother with the customs declaration and (touch wood) I have not had a package go astray.. Shipping times, however, is something that really bugs me.. I have shipped a `letter' to WW in the UK and it took 3 1/2 days to get there.. At the same time I sent one to Newcastle NSW (interstate) and that took 10 days.. I recently shipped an order to Toowoomba QLD and that took 12 days.. Postal services have gone down hill dramatically over the last few years.. Our post office does too many things like accept bill payments and sell printers and ink and other overpriced rubbish. Anyway, if I was you I would ignore the declarations and send in the guise of a `letter' and just pop the appropriate amount of stamps on and send it via a normal post box.. I always try to make sure my packets (letters) dont rattle when shaken. Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814 |
Mine is about 5km away and aprking is soso, but there is rarely anyone in it, so waiting times arent too bad I often wondered why the post office cant make money, they often say its because of the internet killing the letters, but the internet has also brought in a massive increase in small parcel deliveries (I have gotten 1 letter since last xmas, but had 5 small parcels arrive today alone from aliexpress/ebay) all via aussie post, I never had that many letters in one day ever Somethings not right (and their answer here is to talk about having only 2 deliveries a week instead of 5... thats going to make them more money how???) |
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MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
The more packages from China the more losses for the postal services. Less frequent deliveries saves a lot of money as less distance have to be covered with less man hours. Only way to maintain it. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| palcal Guru Joined: 12/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1993 |
Yes I have often though of what MicroBlocks says, all these parcels coming into the country and the postage cost stays in country of origin, Aust. Post delivers them for free ( I think). I suppose in the old days it was sort of a balance, as many letters were sent out of the country as what were received. Here in Oz the Post Office is thinking about a $5 surcharge on each parcel when you pick it up. I often buy things from China worth less than $10 with free postage the $5 extra may make them have to stay in China. "It is better to be ignorant and ask a stupid question than to be plain Stupid and not ask at all" |
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Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1483 |
The local shop here is about 2K away and most of our mail and packages bought go there. We do have a P.O. box about 15K away and it's easy to stop as we go by it on our daily travels. One thing that really bug's me is the time delay, it can take 2 months to get a package from China, 10 days to get a letter from Adelaide 60K away. We used to call it snail mail but today the snail is faster than the postage and at times packages have never arrived, ( more likely stolen by postage sorters.) |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814 |
I was under the impression that australia post didnt actually do it for free, but there are international agreements between the various postal services that set the fees they can charge each other |
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pcaffalldavis Senior Member  Joined: 17/10/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 187 |
Here is an interesting article on International shipping, mostly about China to the USA but speaks to other destination countries too. I couldn't get the link to work, but copy and google the entire following line and you should find it. The Postal Service is losing millions a year to help you buy cheap stuff from China Very interesting indeed. Peter in Hyder We're all here 'cause we're not all there. |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Clickable link to the above.... EDIT: Very interesting article, and quite correct. Bit of a babble begins..... I expect it is probably the same for NZ Post. I know it is a little late three pages into the thread, to say I kinda sympathise with NZ Post to SOME extent. All the banks over here have started emailing all their statements. That ALONE must have really hurt NZ Post, cos before the banks were doing that, they would have had MILLIONS of statements to deliver for all the banks, to everyone in the country with a bank account - and that would be pretty much the entire population. Even though NZ Post most likely gave the banks a very good bulk discount, it still would have cost the banks a lot of money to post out the monthly statements, whereas to email them, it is essentially free. So, you take all that mail off NZ Post, and all they are left with is a dribble of domestic letters and some courier stuff, and that alone is not enough to sustain all the post offices. So, I do sympathise with them, but still - in a town with more then 11,000 people, and they are STILL building houses like crazy here anywhere they can find some land so our population is growing not reducing, and yet they still have to close our post office - makes you think......  As to the cheap stuff from China, I think all of us here on the forums are guilty of buying from China. You simply can't fight the cost difference. Much as I would LOVE to support more local business, minimizing expenses is key to surviving in any kind of small business. Probably in big-business too, as their expenses would be proportionally bigger. As an example, there is a PCB house here in New Zealand, and I have got boards from them, and they are very good boards. BUT they cost TEN TIMES the current price for the exact same board from China at the likes of PCB-GoGo who charge US$5 for ten double-sided PCB's up to 100mm x 100mm. How can any local PCB house compete with that?(rhetorical). So, much as I would love to support the NZ PCB house, it would put all my PCB costs up by a factor of ten at least, and that is just way too much to pay just to support the local house - so I don't.  The Government over here are looking at ways to stop people buying from eBay, AliExpress and Amazon etc, as the local businesses are suffering badly cos of the cheap mail-order stuff from China. We currently have a NZ$400 threshold before you have to pay import duty. So, if the value of the goods is less then NZ$400, there is NO GST/VAT/TAX to pay on the goods at all. Once you exceed that figure, 15% import duty applies. But it is easy to keep your order value below $400, and not pay any tax on it at all - and all that is perfectly legal, as that is the law here at the moment. The Government are wanting to change that so that ANYTHING you buy will have 15% GST added to it by the seller, and that is then passed to the Government. Not going down well with many over here, as you would expect. It remains to see if they ever do it. I also fully expect them to delete that $400 import threshold law any time soon for exactly the same reasons. End of babble. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Boppa Guru Joined: 08/11/2016 Location: AustraliaPosts: 814 |
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Australia_Post_in_Austral ian_communities/Report/c08 A lengthy read, but shows a remarkably different story (I had to mail some parcels yesterday and yes, my 'post office' isnt actually an Ozzy post office, it's a 'licenced Post Office'franchise (who deal exclusively with australia post), who also are considering closing down or moving out of the shopping center!(I had a loverly chat with the lady at the counter as I went down at a quiet time) The overseas post offices do have a charge given to them to Australia post, however these are contracted payments which apparently havent been even looked at in over 5 years, and China has a very nominal fee indeed, despite the huge increases in numbers in recent years. Worse for the licensed PO places like mine, Australia Posts payments to them havent changed since the last parliamentary review and they are (imho obscenely) low- Australia Post raised the fee they pay LPO's from 24 cents per parcel to 26c per parcel in 2014, and it remains at that to today, note that most courier companies charge in excess of $5 per parcel admin costs! A lot of it seems to stem from the upper management/ ministerial levels, where they are often accused by the actual workers of still being locked into past perceptions of how the business runs and what it does (ie letters rather than parcels, management recently started looking for a new contract for smaller 'scooters' rather than the 75cc/125cc bikes they presently use for 'mail deliveries' totally ignoring that more than 3/4 of their deliveries are now parcels, and that they often are now running two separate delivery runs a day, one for letters and then another for parcels with a van!!!! Worse, smaller parcels are given to the bikes, which obviously have smaller carrying capabilities, and so the bikes have to return multiple times to the PO to 'refill' because they are carrying parcels instead of letters.... I can now see why so many LPO's are closing (note too that Australia Post actually have very few what they call corporate post offices left, as many of them were closed down and sold off to become LPO's by the Howard government quite some time ago as a cost cutting measure... (where I am, there are 5 LPOs in the area ie within 20km, basically one in each suburb, but the nearest actual corporate post office is over 25km away.. and is a sorting center with limited provision for actual 'street customers') |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2442 |
NZ SPECIFIC: with the $400 threshold removed, there would be 15% GST PLUS a $45 customs handling fee. along with many others, i would take great pleasure in ordering a slow supply of $1 items from ebay just to have an excuse to drop into customs out at the local airport EVERY day and tie up one of their staff for 15 minutes as i explain how i'm not going to accept the goods/pay the $45 fee. i'm fine with paying the 15% GST, but there is just no practical way for NZ customs to collect it in a cost-effective way. attempting to push the problem onto overseas sellers will not be possible, and nz (as a whole) does risk being blocked from ebay.com and similar sites. the whole GST arguement, i feel, is simply local retailers trying to block nz citizens from having access to overseas markets, aka 1980's style protectionism. but this is just my opinion. regarding NZ post - i have a p.o box, so pay nzpost around $150/year. i reckon it is good value for money, and a service that nzpost should be actively encouraging other customers to have. perhaps we do need to move to a model where there is minimal to-the-gate local deliveries (perhaps just once-a-week), and everyone gets used to having a p.o box at a central location that has a small yearly fee. cheers, rob :-) |
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| TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6283 |
Australia is introducing changes to it's GST threshold starting next month. Businesses who do more than 75k of trade with Aust will have to pay GST (10%) on sales Amazon have spat the dummy and will block Aust sales from their USA sites. Amazon do have an AU site but with limited items and inflated prices. Ebay have said that they can handle it OK. Grogster will have to pay our GST if he sells too many PCBs One crazy idea the pollies had was to charge us, the purchaser, a flat fee , possibly $5, per parcel to compensate for GST losses and postal losses. Considering a lot of my purchases are well below $5 all up, that would kill my purchasing. I am happy paying GST on the $1 value if I don't have to collect it for them. Jim VK7JH MMedit |
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CircuitGizmos Guru Joined: 08/09/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 1427 |
In the U.S. There has been talk on and off about what it might take to 'fix' our postal system - save costs. Some people have talked about dropping Saturday delivery, others have talked about every-other-day delivery. I could put up with things like that if they come to be. But Mr. Rozee's suggestion of everyone getting a box at first didn't set well with me. My post office is 13 miles (that's 21 Celcius... wait.. wrong formula...) away. And I can only imagine the chaos there if boxes became mandatory. But then I thought if technology were used to let me know what was in my box waiting for me, I could skip picking it up until I wanted to. And perhaps by default after a set time the contents would be delivered if I didn't pick it up. Hmmm. Micromites and Maximites! - Beginning Maximite |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
This is another symptom of what Trump is going nuts about. After WWII a lot of treaties were slapped together to give a lot of nations which had been decimated a leg up which was absolutely appropriate at the time. The U.S. had been spared serious damage during the war whereas a LOT of other places had been trashed. The U.S. was in great shape because of the war production levels for six years. Now we're left with the subsidized shipping and postal rates from everywhere to the states. Additionally, the airlines and shiplines figured out how to efficiently use containerized freight. You can pack a lot of PCBs in a freight container in China and split it up in LA or NY and it will cost less than $0.10 to move each PCB from China to NY. I don't know what the answer is. Paul in NY |
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| MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
The answer is to charge what it cost. Especially for what comes out of other countries. If something is shipped from China the cost should be for the Chinese post to deliver it to the port (air/sea) then add the cost for transport to the port of the receiving country and then add costs for the postal service of that country. Now every country is subsidizing China by charging very minimal. And within China it is also subsidized. Unfair trade causing a not level playing field which causes anything to go out of business except the Chinese. Amazon is also using the postal service which is supported by tax money. In a way that is also a subsidy. Real costs are not used hence the problems. Adding import taxes is not going to help as it will be disproportional. Just charge the real cost. Prices within a country are known. Make them profitable and use that as a starting point. So if a small package within for instance New Zealand cost $5, then just charge 5$. With large shipments it is already that way. From source to port, port to port and port to destination are all separate costs. Which part of that cost is collected and paid for by the seller is part of the contract. Time for smaller packages/envelopes to follow that same model. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
Amazon actually has a better way to approach the problem. They have built many massive automated warehouses in strategic spots around the country. They ship containers with many orders in each via UPS to local post offices all over. In each container the individual orders are sorted in the order of delivery of local postal carrier routes. The containers are opened, distributed to individual postal carriers, and the post office handles the last few miles of the delivery. They pay UPS reasonable rates to handle the containers, and they pay the post office more than enough to do the final delivery without encumbering the post office with any sorting duties. There are no subsidies involved. It is remarkably efficient. Paul in NY |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3378 |
Here in near-rural (but not real rural) Nova Scotia, Canada, it is 1km to the local Post Office substation where we have a pick-up box (no personnel, no drop-off of mail), and 5km to the full-service P.O. We renew our box annually, but there is no charge. There is no home delivery. For letters and small packages from the U.S., USPS to Canada post is the cheapest and easiest way. 3 PCBs from Oshpark in the U.S. cost $5US, same as for U.S. delivery. If sent through DHL or FedEx, expect an "import & customs" fee of $25 or more per package. I think nothing of ordering $1 items from China off of ebay. If I had to pay even $1 per package, I would probably try harder to group purchases from a single seller, but it probably wouldn't substantially reduce my purchases. $5 a package certainly would. I'd have no problem paying appropriate sales tax so long as ebay/aliexpress handled it. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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Chopperp Guru Joined: 03/01/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1097 |
I still reckon your dog had something to do with the delay Mick.  .ChopperP |
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| bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2950 |
That darn Dog, I will have to sell him for medical experiments..  Mik Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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