Badly-Packed Parcels Are Worry To The Post Office

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29384, 10 December 1960, Page 15

Badly-Packed Parcels Are Worry To The Post Office

“Some people have wonderful faith in a shoe-box,” said a Post Office official as he scraped the mash of tomato pulp and pips from where the address on the parcel had been, and tried to read the wording underneath. “It often happens like this.” he added. "People up north send down soft fruits to their friends in the South Island without packing them properly, and then we have a cleaning-up job to do.”

The Post Office tries to do its best for its customers, going often to a great deal of trouble to locate the addresses of a badlylabelled or broken parcel, and repacking parcels which have come to grief. This keeps one member of the Moorhouse avenue depot staff busy for two hours a day throughout the year, and much longer in the Christmas rush. Not only fruits come inadequately packed. Glassware and radio and electrical equipment are sent without, apparently, much thought as to the handling necessary before they reach their destination, and all kinds of objects are packed in cartons which are too big for them, or in parcels insufficiently secured. Fragile objects, the Post Office recommended, should be marked “fragile with care” and surrounded by at least two inches of soft packing; pictures with glassed frames should be cased in a wooden box. Fragile parcels are given special treatment, but there is always the unexpected knock or jar which can shatter their contents. For an irreplacable picture, the best method of despatch is probably to play safe and remove the glass, leaving the recipient to arrange for reglazing. Smallish heavy objects need special care in packing, as often they tend to break through the walls of their container. This is especially true if they have been packed rather loosely. Tie-on labels are welcome by the Post Office, but only as additions to addresses written on the pack. Several parcels are held in Christchurch because the only address was on a tie-on label which has become detached,

Liquids give the biggest troubles of all. If their container breaks, they ruin not only their own parcel but perhaps several in the bag with them. A constant source of trouble to the Post Office Is in booklets, cards, or tracts, which have been packed in a double stack, so that there is a line of weakness in the parcel where the stacks meet. There were several parcels awaiting repacking in the Moorhouse avenue depot yesterday through this kind of fault. Strong strings can often overcome this deficiency and many others. Many of the Post Office's customers, however, firms included. rely on cellulose tape to keep their parcels together. Tape has its uses, but only string stands up to the several handlings a long journey involves.

Most of the parcels giving trouble in Christchurch come from those posted in North Island offices. These parcels have, in general, further to travel, with the added hazard of the double handling at each end of the interisland steamer trip. Nevertheless, packing should also be adequate even tor shorter journeys. Yesterday at Moorhouse avenue there was a confetti of used postage stamps from a parcel dispatched from someone in South Otago to a charitable institution, and there was a complaint about damage to a radio which had been posted to the West Coast without special wrapping or a “fragile" label.