New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

Posted: **Wed Mar 16, 2011 7:02 am**

Distraught owner looking for two Dick Smith Cat's which have gone missing (AMEOW - Absent, Missing, Electronique Ordinateur, Wanderlust). Somewhere between Hamilton and Dunedin and somewhere between PBT Couriers & Fastways. Arrival should have been somewhere between 11-14 February.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=352472205

One in fairly good physical appearance. Other missing a couple of keys. Also came with following trinkets:
2 x disk drive controller cards
2 x emulator cartridges

Reward offered for more info.

Items Wanted because there's no Items Missing category.

Grrrhh.

My first ever trademe items to go missing. What really annoys me is how tracking with courier companies is all based around a single arbitrary number and nothing else. Give them an address and they can't confirm anything such as whether they still have the item or even if it was delivered to the actual address. Then they are good at self-signing deliveries. The final strike is in their accountability. It would cost a fortune to import something like a Cat from OZ - if one ever turned up that is.

Posted: **Wed Mar 16, 2011 7:35 am**

Sorry about the DS CAT.

I'm about to send a computer to someone via courier. I'll avoid those two companies!

Posted: **Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:02 pm**

tezza wrote:I'm about to send a computer to someone via courier. I'll avoid those two companies!

Wohoo. Turned up. A month later and I'm pretty certain it never would have if I hadn't persisted. I think I'll just copy & paste a snippet of one of my emails. It should give a small bit of insight into what I might presume rightly or wrongly is how the courier industry operates in general - using a tracking system that is completely agnostic of addresses. Even on the day picking up I twice had difficulties getting past "do you have a tracking number". In the end it would seem their own label (note, not my addressed label) had come off leaving the box in limbo.

I (and probably no one else) really don't understand how the courier system and companies work in NZ. That something can be sent via one courier service and then it gets pass-the-parceled around them. It does all leave my confidence a bit shaken.

I had already been into Fastways last month and they weren't able to help and couldn't find anything when looking. And it doesn't explain why no card was left when it wasn't delivered on the February 14, why no attempt had been made to deliver again, nor contact me just by checking the phonebook, why courier deliveries can be self-signed by the courier, why they said the courier ticket hadn't been used, and why when tracking through PBT web site as a customer it simply shows as delivered.

Even when I went into Fastways that day, they gave me a NZ Courier Post parcel from another trademe delivery. So it seems even NZ Post use other courier companies for deliveries. Accountability sure must be a pretty blurred mess, and the whole courier service system (I guess across the board), doesn't really provide trackability when addresses aren't entered into the system. I gather from this experience with courier companies, that a courier company in fact could never even verify an item has been delivered to a specific address, and all that could be said is something was delivered somewhere???

There seems to be a lot of magic in the system. I send you St. Patrick's Day wishes to express the same sentiments

Many thanks for your assistance,

Clinton

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Posted: **Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:41 pm**

Good to hear they turned up mate, do get us some in-action pics! Same with your other recent acquisition - I can't speak for everyone else but I'm certainly interested!

Posted: **Sat Mar 19, 2011 8:05 am**

YetiSeti wrote:Wohoo. Turned up.

I'm pleased to hear it!

In over 400 Trade Me trades, and hundreds of purchases outside of that fourm, since the late 1990s I've not yet have anything fail to turn up, and I dread the day I do.

Posted: **Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:03 am**

I've had one item which went AWOL for a while. An Amiga 500 TV/Composite video adaptor. Time from New Plymouth to Palmerston North: three weeks!

Posted: **Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:16 am**

Some legislation changes to crack down on couriers will come into effect later this year
which will hopefully address another of my pet gripes - professional traders on Trade Me dodging tax and the Fair Trading & Consumer Guarantees Acts

Posted: **Mon Mar 21, 2011 7:06 pm**

I never had a tracking number but by the end of a fair amount of correspondence and digging I finally got one that was likely to be it.

On the positive side, the quite helpful Dunedin person I talked to at PBT said she'd talked to the boss and they'd look at seeing if an address could be entered into their system in the future.

I've always looked upon couriers as being a cheaper option for big sized items if people will use them instead and blame nz post for their exorbitant profit taking and uncompetitive pricing, especially when they last hiked their prices. I can't even buy a smallish book any more without paying $5 bucks or more in postage.

The worst postage handling I ever get tends to be from nz post. The condition of the packaging and goods that arrive sometimes indicate an uncommonly rough handling. One pong console (Gimini Orbit) which is a one of in my collection arrived with the plastic casing smashed up like like a wrecking ball had dropped on it. Sadly the trader thought I was being dishonest and gaming the system (my feeling, not her words) when I wanted a $100 claim put in (which I though was fair based on the cost of bringing one in from OZ, or another auction listing at the price around that time). So I lost out completely with that one.

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