I always thought that tampering with somebody’s mail was considered to be among the most dastardly of actions..?
Illegal too.
This week’s theory relates to the apparent frequency of just that: for as long as there have been radio stations willing to send out prizes by courier post there have been sticky fingered courier drivers to intercept them. This much is a given and it seems, sadly, we have all come to accept that.
While New Zealand’s band of unscrupulous couriers are busy plundering CDs, concert tickets and the like, however, I have maintained the belief that our trusted mailman, our good old postie, that friendly character who delivers our daily allotment of white envelopes and glossy paged advertisers to our postage receptacles, has remained uncorrupted by what I am just now labelling ‘Postman Avarice’.
That was my belief, anyway. Lately though, after a few years back signing up to an online survey company and giving genuine responses to what has totalled over $500 worth of surveys, my belief has wavered. Alas it has waned to the point where I am left not only disenchanted, I am now downright disgruntled with the New Zealand postal service.
I fill out, on average, four or five dollars worth of surveys each week. Not a lot admittedly, although this does allow me to request a ten dollar ‘reward’ at least once a month, which I then gratefully accept – up to a promised twenty days later – in the form of a ten dollar Subcard.
In the beginning I wasn’t too worried about the reliability of the reward reaching my post box; I naturally accepted it would. Although I had always tried to mentally calculate which card I was receiving in relation to which card I had requested, given the erratic nature of the ‘up to twenty days’ assurance I would frequently lose track – or so I thought – and end up waiting on a particular month’s card that would never eventuate. In this case I would happily assume that I had already received the card on which I had been waiting and, not wanting to cause a fuss, guessed that it must have been my fault for mixing up the card distribution count and that the last card I received must have actually been one from an earlier survey or something, and leave it at that.
It wasn’t until one particularly lucrative month where I was able to in fact request a card on the 1st, a card on the 14th, and a card on the 31st, but over the coming month imagine my surprise at receiving only one $10 Subcard, that I became sufficiently pissed off to inquire into the whereabouts of the missing rewards.
I wasn’t even a smidgen surprised at, when entering the Valued Opinions ‘complaints’ sector and leaving a filthy message for them, on submitting the complaint I was directed immediately back to the start with the website claiming malfunction.
As many days and as many messages as I sent to the survey company, I only ever faced the same issue. It was then that I thought to myself, Perhaps it’s not Valued Opinions who are screwing me over after all, maybe it’s a force much more sinister – given that the envelopes the survey company uses are indeed distinguishable and whatever reward they contain is only ever a gift card thus can be used by anyone – maybe my beef is with the underpaid, overworked and eternally reliable postal worker of New Zealand..?
Given how sticky-fingered your courier counterparts can be I guess you simple posties would be feeling a little left out; not to say increasingly disgruntled.
Article by Tim Walker
Edited by Starr Kefin Gird
Photography by Poe S Tay