We are finding that subscription issues of all our MyTimeMedia titles arriving in Australia has been affected over the last few months. On discussing this with our overseas distributors, they have advised that Australia Post has been affected more than most Countries by the pandemic. We know they have suffered severe backlogs as a result of staff and HGV driver shortages, at a time when they were also experiencing a massive increase in online shopping and delivery volumes, all against a backdrop of the Omicron strain of COVID spreading rapidly across the country. The problems had been exacerbated in the run-up to Christmas peak and by the prioritisation of parcels above untracked mail.

Whilst nothing could be done to fix Australia Post’s internal challenges, our distributors managed to take certain steps to hopefully alleviate concern and have been working to enhance transparency and track-ability to the point of lodgement with Australia Post; simultaneously enhancing the likelihood of timely processing and delivery by Aus Post.

Our monitoring shows that the problem is now alleviating at Aus. Post. In the case of current tissues, priority class is now being delivered in 10-19 days following dispatch. In the case of previous issues, any log-jam (where that was the case) is evidently clearing – this can mean delivery of single previous issues or, in many cases, multiple issues being delivered in a batch.