Losing her pet dog Bear after nursing him through years of illness was a heart-breaking moment for young vet nurse Briar Hadfield.
But the heartbreak was made even worse when NZ Post shelved Bear’s ashes on their journey to be turned into a keepsake memento.
Briar says she and Bear had struck up a special bond from the moment she helped with his birth “he absolutely adored me right from the start”.
They were inseparable. Sadly, within a few years Bear developed a problem with bladder stones. Briar paid thousands of dollars for surgeries to help him, but eventually realised the kindest thing to do was to let him go, “it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life”.
She wanted a keepsake made from his ashes and found a UK jeweller that would set them into a ring.
She went to her local Paper Plus post shop in Taradale, Napier and asked if she could send the ashes by post.
The employee was unsure and checked with his manager but said that it should be fine as long as a customs declaration form was completed.
Briar carefully packaged the precious item and paid $122 for express delivery and tracking so that she could follow the ashes’ journey.
All went well, with a tracking message received by Briar the next day as the package arrived at Auckland Airport. She then checked her phone daily for further updates, but none came.
Weeks passed and she decided to contact NZ Post to see what had happened.
Briar says the response was very matter of fact as they told her the item contained prohibited goods and had been shelved. “They kept referring to the package like it was a pair of shoes or something, he was a best friend to me, it was hard to hear them talk like that”.
Briar’s first complaint was that despite paying for tracking, no-one had let her know.
The ashes could have been sitting there for months. She was also frustrated at having been given the wrong advice and thought that it was only fair to receive a refund, or to have the ashes returned by courier.
NZ Post said there would be no refund and she’d have to pick the ashes up from Auckland herself. Briar says they told her “it should have been my responsibility to check.
I did say how come your staff member told me I could send them? and they said it was still my fault”. Briar felt there was a complete lack of empathy and went to Fair Go for help.
When Fair Go raised the issue, NZ Post were quick to respond.
A customer services representative rang Briar directly and was full of apology, Briar says she “felt really heard about it which was cool”. NZ Post admitted Briar should have been alerted to what had happened and a promise was made that procedures would be revisited with further training delivered on how to handle issues like hers.
And to prove every dog has their day, NZ Post refunded the cost of postage and gifted Briar an additional $100 to go towards a memento of Bear. So much time had passed that Briar had already couriered the ashes to a New Zealand company for a ring to be made, so she spent the extra on a tattoo in honour of her four-legged friend.
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