Stamp prices going up soon but keep sending your TTMs

[Keatoboy]

Hi all,

Recently I contacted Australia Post about soon to come stamp price hikes and just thought I would give you the full transcript. This is a must read for anyone worried about not getting items back after the price hike.

Cheers,
Keaton

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

Good Afternoon Keaton,

I trust that you are well and that you are enjoying your afternoon. My name is Marnie and I can certainly assist you with your enquiry about the very important items that you send to professional sports athletes which are then returned to you. I can appreciate your concern because these items do take time to be sent back to you and you are fearful that by the time some of your items are sent back to you, our new price for stamps would have come into effect.

If postage is invalid on an item Keaton, we will still deliver the item as it is addressed. However, what will happen is that an underpaid mail bill will be sent to either the sender (if the sending address is on the item) otherwise this will be sent to the addressee as a "more to pay" fee that would need to be paid in order for the item to be received successfully. The value of stamps is enclosed onto the actual stamp so yes, we would be able to see the postage value that has been used.

If for any reason we are not able to complete the delivery to the address your are sending to, or back to your address and for example, no sender address is on the back to return the item to, your letter will be taken to our Returned Mail Centre where we attempt to reunite them with their owner.

I appreciate that the contents you are sending are sensitive items that are worth quite some amount of money and if you ar enot doing so already Keaton, I would recommend that you consider our Registered Post service. The added security of a signature on delivery will give you the peace of mind that it has been received by the intended recipient and further to this, your item is provided a tracking number so you can follow its journey.

 

[Matty76]

Well, you can't argue with all of that young fella. Good job, it's something I never even thought of (although I DO whack a heap of stamps on my TTMs...probably overkill to be truthful!).

 

[GarnettFan4Life]

Nice one, good info

 

[mattharper85]

Thanks for sharing mate

 

[Keatoboy]

Bump

 

[Wookiedragon]

They generally are pretty leanient with this from what i have seen.

I was worried when they went up from 60c to 70c and I had sent out quite a few TTMs, however I never once had one come back with more to pay on it, even though it was some months after the price hike when I had several come back with the old postage on them.

 

[Brian Lee]

I know ppl who work at Australia Post, they don't care about these because it would cost them way more than the 5-10 cents to have a process to deal with them. Also, the guy who stamps the envelopes is working the graveyard shift, its so much easier to just stamp them all blindly.

 

[Keatoboy]

Bumping this with prices changing January 4th 2016.

 

[GarnettFan4Life]

Postage times are changing too? 4-6 days instead of 2 for regular mail?

 

[Keatoboy]

Yep that's right, I outlined that in my post in the Cricket section, I'll post that here in just a sec.

 

[Keatoboy]

Here we go:

• Regular stamp price will increase from 70c to $1.
• Regular interstate post delivery time will now be 5 days instead of 3.
• Regular same state post delivery times will now be 3 days instead of next day/2 days.
• To get the same delivery times as they are currently, you will have to use the priority service. This will cost $1.50, with the stamp costing $1 and a priority sticker 50c.

These changes will come in to effect from the 4th of January 2016. So if you're sending out TTMs, make sure to put your address as the return address on the return envelope to ensure you get it back after stamp prices go up!