Several parcel service businesses have launched in Australia offering faster, cheaper delivery and enhanced convenience in direct competition with controversial mail giant Aus Post.
Recently launched delivery services Taxi Lineup, People’s Post, and WizMe make up a new wave of independent courier companies trumping speed and convenience in the wake of Aus Post’s price hikes and slowed delivery.
Designed for businesses relying on local postage, the services cater for urgent delivery and deadlines.
Chief executive of newly launched parcel service Taxi Lineup Ross McDonald says his first customers in Sydney and Melbourne have been printers pushing to meet pressing and after hours deadlines.
“We started two weeks ago and all of our deliveries have been print companies who called us wanting a delivery service,” says McDonald.
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Taxi Lineup provides parcel delivery through a local network of registered taxi drivers, and McDonald says the advantage is a 24-hour service, and businesses can choose delivery in one, two, three or six hour windows.
The autonomous postage services form up in direct competition with Aus Post, which has long held a monopoly on mailing in Australia.
However, the mail outfit has recently come under fire for rising costs and impractical delivery times, pushing consumers to look for crowd-sourced services.
WizMe offers a similar business model of same-day, flat-rate delivery locally and Australia wide, which it says ‘reduces prices and provides a seamless process when compared to Australia Post.’
Managing director Vicki Cameron says, in most cases, delivery times through WizMe’s courier service are ‘faster than Australia Post’ and there are no additional costs or signature on delivery.
Unlike Taxi Lineup and WizMe, private courier service People’s Post closely mirrors an Uber- style model.
Much like the crowd-sourced taxi service Uber, People’s Post connects users to couriers through an online platform, and the drivers use their own independent transport to deliver parcels.
In a bid to compete with the trend of online couriers, Aus Post earlier this month revealed it has partnered with e-commerce company Data61 to digitise its postal service.
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