Australia Post customer 'devastated' after package worth $6k arrives empty
The Perth shopper believes someone slit the box and helped themselves to the goods.
A Perth woman is fuming after she ordered $6,000 worth of designer dresses and handbags — many vintage and “irreplaceable” — only to find nothing inside the Australia Post delivery box.
Deborah Levy is an experienced secondhand seller and told Yahoo News Australia that she regularly buys and sells Camilla Frank designer clothing. “I bought a parcel worth about $6,000 for $2,000 from a guy I have bought from before,” she explained, saying the clothing belonged to the seller’s mother, wife and sister “who wanted to offload their clothes".
“He sent it from his local post office who for some unknown reason charged him a fortune for the box and put 13kg on the box, when in fact the box should have not been more than four to five kilograms, and that package should have cost $20 to $25 max to send it express.”
“But when the box arrived, delivered into my hands by my normal Australia Post delivery guy, I opened it and all that was in there was brown wrapping paper and a brown paper bag.”
Horrified, Deborah called her seller, who lives in Sydney, and sent him a video of the package that had arrived. “He told me that wasn’t the tape he sealed the box with,” she said, explaining there was a mix of clean tape and masking tape on the box.
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“There were about nine dresses and four bags, and a lot were new with tags. The retail value would be around $6,000 but once it becomes second hand, and the pieces are older, even if they haven’t been worn, the value goes down.”
What happened to the dresses?
After speaking with the seller, Deborah believes someone in the delivery chain between NSW and Western Australia ‘“slit it [the box] open, emptied it and then resealed it in different tape and sent it on”.
“I believe that this happened in the sorting area or it could have been a truck driver that pulled over,” she said. “But the real question is why my package had no contents listed and no value? It’s so weird. I even said to the Australia Post supervisor, ‘why not just lose the parcel, why actually go to all that trouble and send it on?’”
Both Deborah and the seller went to their local post offices to report what had happened. That was three weeks ago, and Deborah says she’s been getting the run around from Australia Post ever since. “I have called almost every day for a month, I have spoken to supervisors, I have written letter after letter, and I have been told it’s being looked into,” she said. “I have also spoken to the seller’s post office and they said the package was definitely heavy when they took it.
“In the meantime I’m out of pocket and devastated that those pieces were lost.”
Speaking to Yahoo News, Australia Post confirmed it was looking into the incident. “We are investigating this issue as a priority and are in touch with the customer directly,” a spokesperson said.
“Australia Post delivers an average of 9.5 million parcels each week, with the vast majority reaching their destination safely. We encourage any customers experiencing delivery issues to call 13 POST (13 7678).”
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