Your wins: Rural delivery woes

Consumer NZ member Sue discovered an Ohakune home she was sending items to was designated as rural by the courier company Post Haste. This increased the cost of delivery, despite a quick Google showing the home was just off the town’s main street.

Sue thought this was ridiculous.

“There’s no RD in any address on that street and if you Google it you will see it is very much part of the township. No cow, sheep or other farm animal in sight.”

Sue emailed Post Haste to alert them, but the company replied confirming the address was designated as rural.

Sue asked to speak to someone higher up as she wanted the error fixed, but was told by the staff member that their manager agreed the rural designation was correct.

So, Sue contacted Consumer NZ’s Advice Line to see whether we had a solution. We were able to put her in touch with another member, Wendy, who had successfully got her Blenheim address changed from rural to urban.

Wendy had told us, “My address has always been classified town with the NZ Post Office, but the private companies ignored that; meaning I was having to pay the more expensive rural delivery which irked, but it was only when some online retailers would no longer deliver to rural designated locations that I began to get motivated”.

To fix the problem, Wendy had contacted the national operations manager for Post Haste, which also runs other brands including Castle Parcels and Now Couriers. He was able to quickly change her address to urban. Sue followed Wendy’s advice and got in touch with the operations manager who got the Ohakune designation corrected. He emailed her to say, “I’ve had our mapping team look at the Ohakune Urban/Rural boundaries and have had them tidied up in our mapping system. We also made a few other positive tweaks around the Ohakune central area. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, we greatly appreciate it,” he said.

Sue was stoked. “Wendy was a star – as was Consumer NZ for putting me in touch with her. I would not have got the great result without them”.