AUSTRALIA POST has been forced to apologise to residents of a Victorian town after it was revealed a post box had not been emptied for five months.
The box, located in Beechworth, had been neglected by Australia Post since October 2017.
When it was finally emptied, it was “full to the brim” with bills, letters, Christmas cards and even same-sex marriage ballots.
The error was discovered by Beechworth’s Plumbing Plus after many clients with overdue bills told owner Joanne Westra they had never received their invoice.
Mrs Westra contacted Australia Post to demand an answer, only to be told one of the town’s post boxes, located on Junction Road, had apparently been forgotten by the organisation for almost half a year.
In a Facebook post, the company alerted customers to the problem, and confirmed Australia Post had apologised for the oversight.
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“Beechworth’s Plumbing Plus wish to advise our account customers, who receive their invoices and statements by mail, that unfortunately we have discovered that the post box on Junction Rd, a few metres from our front door, had not been cleared since October,” the post read.
“We had noticed that some of our customers had fallen behind in their payments. At the same time we had started to get an increasing number of customers saying that they had not received their monthly statements.
“It did take us 5 months of posting at Junction Rd to finally figure this out. We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience that this has caused.
“We are also concerned about other local people in the Junction Rd area who had posted items in this box as it was full to the brim with items including Christmas cards, bill payments, personal letters, etc.
“Australia Post have apologised to us for their mistake. Regular clearing of this box has now resumed.”
Mrs Westra told The Border Mail she was unimpressed by the “compensation” offered by Australia Post.
“We realised because we couldn’t fit our post in there anymore, it was filled to the brim,” she said.
“All I’ll say is $50 in compensation and two boxes of stamps isn’t much.
“We’re also aware of Christmas cards, birthday cards and a large cheque an elderly man sent to pay for hay bales that was never received.”
Mrs Westra said a sign had been posted to the box in October alerting residents that clearing times were about to change to 1pm Monday to Friday from October 9 onwards.
But apparently, staff then forgot about the box altogether.
An Australia Post spokeswoman told The Border Mail the problem had now been rectified.
“Australia Post wholeheartedly apologises for this error,” she said.
“We can confirm all mail has now been delivered with a letter of explanation and an apology.
“This is an isolated incident that occurred when the collection route was handed over to a different team.”
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