Above & Beyond Nice at Newtown Post Office

BY MISS BONNIE OF THE BABY BUMP 

Baby Daddy, the wee peanut and I are nearing moving day and thought we'd have a big clean out of our clothes and sell what we could on Trade Me. After quite a few successful auctions I bundled up all our things and trucked on down to the post office in Newtown.

Quite clearly I've been hiding under a rock for, well, forever and had no idea that it was incredibly super expensive to send packages. Living in the stone ages, I charged a mere $3.00 of all my successful Trade Me auctionees for a fast post delivery. I had just enough money in my wee purse to pay this amount and this amount only. Boy did I short change myself!

Oblivious to the embarrassment I was about to suffer at the head of a 20 strong line of customers I grabbed the $1.45 parcel envelopes, shoved various clothes in and started scrawling away names and addresses thinking I'd gotten myself quite the bargain. $1.45 to send a package! Yippee! Well, we can all see where this is headed, can't we?

It took until a couple of the packages had been weighed and stickers stuck on their front that my heart sunk and I got that prickly feeling and thought to myself, oh crud. It's $1.45 for the envelopes only. In between the lady behind the counter's lovely comments about my wee bubs propped on my hip I weakly asked "Um, so you add the postage price onto the envelope? And how much is each one?" I recoiled in horror when she told me the average price of each parcel and how much the total was and I honestly felt like I was going to cry. I was going to sob and weep and bang my fists in front of all these people waiting (im)patiently behind me.


So I said to Kumari (the lovely lady behind the counter who was about to become my new favourite person) that I'd made a huge mistake and I wasn't sure if I could pay for them all. As my face went beet red and I was wracking my brains for ways I could get out of this hideous predicament, she said "Look, just this once, I'll send them all and why don't you pay for what you can now and you can come back and pay for the rest by the end of the week."


Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. Really, really? I asked. Now I thought I was going to cry for the sheer loveliness of it all! And after much assurance on her part that no, she wouldn't get into trouble as she was the one who makes the decisions and yes, she trusted me to come back and pay (I insisted on leaving my name and number for her peace of mind) I paid for what I could and promised to be back in tomorrow first thing with the money owed. 


Now I'm not saying pop on down Newtown post shop with no money and a package but I was just blown away by the compassion of this wonderful woman. Not only did she send all my parcels but also insisted that next time I send Trade Me things to come see her and she'd find me the best deal on postage she could. Now that's what I call customer service.


And you know what? The amazing service I was provided almost makes up for the fact that I completely short changed myself by about $20. Almost. But not quite.