NZ Post and courier company Aramex are adding additional checks for rural collections and deliveries after a scientist nearly lost four years of globally significant research in the mail.
“Irreplaceable” is how Dr Anne Grassham describes the box she tried to send from rural Nelson to Ohio State University almost six months ago.
It held 1700 photographic slides of ice Antarctic landscapes in the late 1970s and 1980s, many from her deep field research in the Royal Society Range, along with all her original field notes on Antarctic geology.
“As far as global warming's concerned, comparing how snow and ice cover has changed, they actually have a lot more scientific importance than I thought,” said Grassham
Grassham’s history is remarkable. She was one of the first women paid to work at Scott Base and in some cases one of the first humans to set foot in parts of Antarctica and return with photos.
Her collection was headed to OSU’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center for its contents to be scanned into a public archive.
“It's a wealth of information,” says Dr Anne Grunow, director of the Byrd Center’s Polar Rock Repository.
“I think it's going to help give us a baseline for how things are changing on almost an annual basis. Some glaciers advance, some retreat; it'll show surface conditions for people that are doing exposure-age dating.”
But that was all lost after Grunow bought a prepaid label with courier UPS and Grassham stuck it on a box and left it at her farm gate for collection.
When it didn’t reach the destination after three weeks, Grassham started asking questions but found NZ Post, UPS and its intermediary Aramex were passing the parcel – or at least - the responsibility.
NZ Post couldn’t seem to locate the delivery it had collected while Aramex wouldn’t escalate the matter as it wasn’t yet scanned into its system.
A lack of care
In Grassham’s view, a lack of care lay at the heart of the matter.
“They're used to dealing I think with mail order stuff from big shops, so, ‘oh well that one went missing we'll just pay the insurance on it and send another, no big deal.’ They don't value the items that are entrusted to their care. That's what I find difficult.”
Grassham said UPS was no greater help, telling her the purchaser of the label needed to raise the matter, even as UPS was telling Grunow the reverse.
“They were very insistent that they could do nothing until it actually got scanned and I could not do anything either, because I was the receiver and only the shipper could initiate action from New Zealand,” said Grunow.
UPS made no official comment to Fair Go, while Aramex suggested NZ Post needed to explain.
"An error occurred when NZ Post collected the parcel and sent it to their international depot. It should have been sent to our Aramex depot, which would have been the correct procedure,” said Aramex NZ chief executive Mark Little.
“We understand that NZ Post were not aware the parcel was in their international depot with other undelivered freight and deemed the parcel as lost."
NZ Post said the parcel got stuck at its International Mailing Centre which is a Customs Controlled Area and Customs had flagged the parcel due to it having a non-NZ Post sticker.
"We had a number of emails, calls and correspondence with Anne over the next three months – trying to locate where the item was being held,” said NZ Post general manager of service delivery Matthew Riordan.
“As the product had a UPS label on it and was our competitor’s product, we could only help to ascertain what happened up to a certain point."
NZ Post has 676 rural delivery runs to 278,000 destinations. It said operators handle freight-forwards for Aramex, Toll and PBT on behalf of NZ Post and some also pick up for competitors as a side.
'We should have done better'
That’s shown up a potential weak spot for Aramex.
“Upon review of this particular incident, we have identified an opportunity to put some additional checks in place for outsourced rural collections," said Little.
Riordan added "it is clear from reviewing this customer’s enquiry that we could and should have done better and sincerely apologise to Anne."
NZ Post has worked with Customs to introduce a new holding area before parcels land in a Customs Controlled Area, to stop and check mislabelled packages before they reach limbo.
The best news is that Grassham’s research has been found.
After spending at least four months lost in that international mail centre, it completed a nine-day loop of Auckland’s southern motorways and various depots owned by NZ Post, Aramex and UPS.
More questioning from Fair Go produced reports the box had been located at UPS by a senior staff member on their day off.
Requests to visit the UPS facility and check the contents of the box for Grassham were declined. Instead, UPS sent the box onwards, via NZ Post, back to the same rural delivery contractor who had uplifted it five and a half months earlier.
A grateful Grassham said it’s all there and she plans to send the parcel to the US with another courier once she’s carefully considered which one to use.
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