Posted by I’d prefer not to have to write this post. But I need to record it. After all it has been weighing on my mind all week and is driving me mental.
NZ Post have got my passport. They’ve had it for 8 days and I am having some trouble getting it back.
It is (as far as I know) sitting in a building in Auckland at the moment, rather than on my desk with my travel papers.
I sent it to the Ugandan High Commission in Canberra, Australia, in order to get a visa for entry into that country. I am attending an Ease of Doing Business conference in Kampala next week.
I sent my passport along with other requisite items and payment to the High Commission last week. Part of the package included a self-addressed envelope and payment for a courier return. I purchased one of NZ Post’s plastic self sealing envelopes for the return voyage.
I factored in that things might be a little tight given the ANZAC Day holiday but figured that I’d be OK overall.
I began to get a little anxious earlier last week and established from the very helpful person at the High Commission that it had been dispatched to me on 23rd April 2015. I was able to obtain the tracking number from them also.
When I entered this into the NZ Post system it happily tells me that my package arrived in New Zealand on Sunday 26th April.
So on Friday morning (having waited for the courier to no avail) I contacted NZ Post via their live chat service. They advised that the parcel had been damaged and that it was sitting at the Christchurch depot.
I telephoned NZ Post and sought more information but was told that it was in Christchurch but that they couldn’t put me through to the depot.
So I drove to the Courier Post depot at the airport, only a 40 minute drive each way. Was told that the parcel had been among others that had been saturated and had been sent back to NZ Post for damage assessment.
I said that I’d pop over to NZ Post and chat to them (their postal centre is around the corner at the airport), but was told that the parcel had been returned to the damage team in Auckland.
I have now spent three additional days telephoning the NZ Post contact centre trying to get someone to understand that I need to know whether the passport is damaged (as I’ll therefore need to urgently get a replacement) or whether it is just the packaging and that I just really need my passport. If it’s just damaged packaging they can repack it and I could have it overnight. All would be wonderful.
Each time I ring I get a different, very polite and attentive person but each time nothing happens. Things get logged into computers, people make notes as to the urgency of the matter but nobody, not one person actually understands and follows up.
The person I spoke to this morning told me that the parcel is back in Auckland and was in the building that she was talking to me from.
I am really sick of talking to contact centre staff.
I want to find one person at NZ Post with the initiative to take off their headphones and walk to the damaged parcels room, talk to the person there, find my parcel, look at it and call me…
That’s what will make the difference.
A Mathom House of Sorts 
Oh how I empathise with you. I have recently spent four 27minute periods of ‘live chat’ with people who have told me that a) my Apple mac is not compatible with their system
b)I am not registered as one of their customers (having been with them for five years)
c) They will talk me through the problem but then get cut off when I go back into the system
d) They seem to completely have no understanding of what I am asking and therefore cannot give a satisfactory reply
I think hits is known as progress – i.e. not having a human voice to talk to.
hope things get resolved x
You could keep looking for that one person…. or get on a flight, and go find your passport yourself. I suspect, unfortunately, that the latter would be easier.