They probably arrive on the same flight
I had a nice chat with postie when he came to do the door last week with my order. I asked why he was still delivering mail daily since the Christmas rush had finished. He said they had now gone back to the old system as the new system introduced during Covid -supposedly for safety but basically just an excuse to cut staff, was no longer working. Surprise, surpise. I hadnāt seen it on the news or anything, so they APost didnāt say it too loudly. He said its busier now than before Covid and they are hiring more staff. Both the posties and the public are happy. We like our mail every weekday and they get a lot more done on the bikes than trundling around in an overloaded cart. Carts are still available if needed. Then there is staff available to drive around in the vans delivery parcels. Common sense you would have thought
Our posties still use carts as they also hold a lot of small parcels to take the load off delivery vans (and she can putter along listening to audio books), but yes, I had noticed that mail was now mostly daily again. That was kept quiet!
Ok, please excuse a bit of an extended quarantine induced rant, but my lack of postcards last week put me in a moodā¦
I play a bit of tag here on the forum to try to keep my mailbox from being empty for weeks at a time but last week even that failed me.
Does anyone else get the impression that mail just isnāt delivered on rainy days?
And here we are on an overcast Monday so maybe this quarantine week 2 will be more of the same
Iām finally back to only one less sent than received so I guess I can expect May to be another extreme peak month
Iām only seeing this just now Amanda. Iām sorry you were having a sparse few weeks, mail-wise. I havenāt considered the rainy day factor. My post goes to the PO Boxā¦so itās not like thereās a postie biking it around the suburbs. I guess during deluges and extreme weather events (especially if storms are forecast) they may prevent the bike and trike posties going outā¦?? It would make sense.
My postbox has been very quiet lately. Iāve slowed right down on the forum postcards and so am just waiting for my officials to be registered and as we all know, that takes forever and ever and ever.
Iāve just written a postcard for a bingo congrats and after putting it all together am just noticing that the postcardā¦which is squareā¦exceeds one of the given Oz Post dimensions by 1 cm. But then itās about 10 cm under the maximum in the other dimension. Iād never noticed these restrictions on postcard size before. And I have sent this size and shape card on three previous occasionsā¦and they all got through (albeit to different countries).
I think Iāll have to send this one, as is, and hope for the best. I can always send another card if it fails to arriveā¦annoying as that will be.
I hope your mail rate has improved, and that you are free of quarantine!
I got a new sticker recently.
I received a standard envelope with a few cards in it from a member who was destashing. It had been opened and resealed with this sticker.
I wonder if it appeared dodgy, just a random check or an election gimmick. Iāve never had an envelope opened before
Hmm, I wonder why they would be prompted to open an envelope of cards. I had an envelope for an official card sealed like that recently, but there was a teabag in it so I wasnāt so surprised. The more ridiculous thing was they opened and then resealed the teabag packet as wellā¦!
I got one of those too, but the envelope contained a feather (!) so Iām not surprised
Mine says MGF where you have SGF. I wonder what the difference is. Melbourne/Sydney or something?
Thatās hilarious! At that point itās like āwhy are you giving this back to me?ā
I think you are onto something there missmelbourne. My envelope was stamped SWLF - the Sydney letter facility.
There we go! And Iāve just learnt that the GF in MGF/SGF is gateway facility.
I wonder if itās just Melbourne and Sydney or whether there are other gateway facilities? Time to try and collect the set
You just need to get lots of people to send you suspicious packagesā¦
Suspicious but not so suspicious that they get completely confiscated. Tough balance!
Was the feather confiscated? I thought they were prohibited?
And I had wondered whether a teabag would make it through or not!
I just went through airport security on Thursday with quite a big wad of postcards and some washi tapes in my bag. I got pulled up and had my bag checked.
The guy inspected the tapes and said because they were paper and could be rippedā¦that they were ok! I didnāt know sticky tape was an issueā¦or were they possibly looking to see if it was duct tape or electricians tapeā¦which I guess could be used for other purposes? I didnāt think to askā¦I was too surprised. He also said the big wad of paper (my postcards) set off the scanner tooā¦ooops. Beware the naughty Postcrossers on vacation!
Speaking of the SWLFā¦they are a bit annoying sometimes!
I got a pretty postcard yesterdayā¦and it had the whole orange barcode and associated black place/date/time stampā¦not once, not twice, not three times but FOUR TIMES.
It had been done once on the picture side of the postcard, and three times - along three different edges - on the writing side of the card!!! OMGā¦how to mess up a really pretty postcard! Very annoying! But it gave me a funny mental image of my postcard endlessly looping through the facility and then being flipped and flipped and flipped again, in order that the address could be read and scannedā¦or whatever it is that they are doing there
The feather wasnāt confiscated. I assume they examined it and determined that it was fine for whatever reason, but yes the whole thing was a bit strange.
Wellā¦ Iāve sent a postcards two weeks ago in a post office near my home, and just received it yesterdayā¦I thought it was lost because I didnāt write my full nameā¦ (because I live in a student apartment, if admin canāt find the name of the mail, it will be returned)ā¦