Airline capacity, weather conditions delay online shopping parcels' arrival

Tuesday, 23 July 2019

After mail blew out of a north Auckland letterbox in December, a business owner resorted to securing the NZ Post box with masking tape.

New Zealand Post is blaming airline capacity and bad weather for delays getting packages to New Zealand.

A spokeswoman said its international e-commerce service had experienced delays in July due to airline capacity and adverse weather conditions.

'These have been isolated events and we have worked with those affected to ensure that they could provide up-to-date information to their customers,' she said.

There had also been engineering issues with aircraft over the past fortnight, which had caused delays in deliveries of some parcels.

* Books ordered from UK for Christmas turn up weeks too late**

The aircraft were now back in service and were operating normally, she said.

'We operate a fleet of three 737-400 jet aircraft, two of which were undergoing engineering maintenance at the same time…in the meantime, we chartered an aircraft from Australia and also put additional vehicles on the road to help,' the spokeswoman said.

The UK-based Book Depository, which ships books to 160 countries, pointed out the problems in a message posted on the Book Depository website.

One customer said it was enough to put them off placing an order.

The NZ Post spokeswoman said deliveries had only been delayed by a few hours in most cases, but customers in remote areas might have had to wait an extra day outside of the normal time.

There was no further backlog associated with the aircraft issues. A fourth 737 aircraft would be added to the fleet in October, she said.

Book Depository is reporting delays in delivery to New Zealand and South Africa.

Have you experienced delays in a delivery from overseas recently? Please email bonnie.flaws@stuff.co.nz or the newstips mailbox, newsroom@stuff.co.nz.

New Zealand Post had engineering issues with aircraft over the past fortnight, which had caused delays in deliveries of some parcels.

NZ Post was not able to provide information about whether it had received reports of delays from Book Depository customers, but said a notable spike in inquiries about a specific sender would lead to an investigation.

New Zealand Post experienced international delays in July due to airline capacity and adverse weather conditions, a spokeswoman said.

It aimed to deliver parcels within three working days of arriving in the country, notwithstanding hold-ups from regulatory authorities like Customs, which could hold parcels for assessment, influencing delivery time frames.

New Zealand Customs Service spokeswoman Helen Keyes said that it was not experiencing delays at the international mail centre, which normally clears items within three days.

Because there was no tariff on books and most orders were low value, they would not normally be referred to Customs for duty collection, she said.

NZ Post's spokeswoman said if a customer believed their parcel had arrived in New Zealand but not had not yet been delivered, it encouraged them to contact the customer service centre through the website to enable an investigation.