SingPost Finally (& Suddenly) Apologised Openly After Numerous Complaints ‘Recently’

By
George Yang
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One of the most difficult words to say is “sorry”.

Just ask our boss. He has forced people to download our app to read our articles, and we’ve been begging him to apologise to our readers but he’s still adamant. Every morning, we’ll crowd around his desk and say, “Boss, let’s just say sorry to our readers lah…”

He’ll then ask me to wash his car, ask Colleague CB to make coffee for him and ask Colleague KNN to buy McDonald’s for him instead. Not even a single trace of remorse—that’s why we all hate him and often put staple bullets on his chair, but he’s got such big ass that they just got stuck on his butt.

Anyways.

SingPost hasn’t been having the best few weeks recently: after Andy Lau, a Facebook user in Singapore instead of a Heavenly King, complained about how the postman in his area merely knocked for a few seconds before leaving a collection slip, a can of worm has been opened as more complaints stream in.

Netizens started to share their experience about their postmen doing the same thing, and last week, it’s revealed that their staff even ‘tricked’ a business owner by sending him photos of delivered flyers when they were not.

But what pissed people off were the lack of apology in their statements.

No Apologies in Statements

In Andy Lau’s case, this is the statement SingPost released:

We have spoken with Andy and thank him for his understanding. 

From our investigations, it appears that Andy and our postman just missed each other. At 11.52am on 26 December 2018, our postman brought a package up to Andy’s home as it was too large to fit in the letterbox. In accordance with our procedures, he waited at least 45 seconds, knocking on the door several times. As there was no response, he slid a delivery advice under the door. At the lift landing while waiting for the lift, our postman turned back to see if someone might have answered the door.

Following the unsuccessful delivery attempt, our postman returned the package to his scooter and proceeded to deliver another item to a unit in the same block that is not accessible by the lifts serving Andy’s flat. After completing that delivery, he was met at his scooter by Andy, to whom he handed over the package. As our postman is not fluent in English, he was unable to explain the situation to Andy then.

With three million items coming through our postal network each day, it is our priority to deliver them successfully on the first try. We have in place clear operational procedures and a system of rewards and disincentives to ensure compliance. We are also harnessing technology to strengthen our processes and enable new capabilities for the rise of eCommerce deliveries, where packages may not fit in the letterbox, and our customers are not home to receive them.

There’s not even a trace of remorse—in fact, it’s more like they’re defending themselves, which would make sense if it’s an isolated case.

Last week, after a SingPost postman tried to “trick” a business owner into thinking that he has delivered the flyers when he hadn’t, SingPost issued this statement:

SingPost takes customer feedback seriously and a series of investigations was launched following the issues raised by Mr Johnson Tan.

The first round of investigations was launched when Mr Tan contacted SingPost on 7 December 2018. We had shared our findings with Mr Tan in mid-December. When Mr Tan had an extra round of concerns, SingPost launched another investigation into his claims. This time, acting on the pointers raised by Mr Tan, the findings indicated that our ground teams had indeed been negligent in the first round of investigations. We have since closed the loop on these gaps, including disciplinary action taken against offenders.

We thank Mr Tan for working closely with us and giving us the opportunity to improve on our processes. At the same time, SingPost will use this as another learning opportunity to better its processes. We thank Mr Tan and the public for their patience with us.

Once again, no apology—they took disciplinary action against the offenders but didn’t apologise for the whole incident.

Nothing on SingPost Facebook Post Previously

You would have thought that they might at least post something on Facebook to clear their name, but no: through the last few weeks, they’ve been posting irrelevant stuff online, like, erm, a behind-the-scene video of their Regional eCommerce Logistics Hub.

Netizens were complaining (very passively aggressively, I may add) in the comments section but they still did not post anything pertaining to the recent hiccups.

Finally, SingPost Apologises

Well, it seems like SingPost has been listening, and finally, they suddenly post this on their Facebook Page:

If you can’t read, here’s what they’ve written:

We hear you. And we should have done better.

Dear SingPost customers,

You may have heard about our service failures in the past few weeks. First of all, we extend our most sincere apologies to everyone who has been inconvenienced by us in any way. We hear you, and agree that your experience with SingPost could have been better. We want you to know that we are taking a serious look at the issues that have surfaced recently and are finding ways to improve on them, immediately.

It would be fair to state, that we have failed to live up to expectations, in recent times. We would like to take this opportunity to explain some of the background for this service deterioration. SingPost processes an average of 3 million mail items a day, yet we believe that we are only as good as our last delivery and we treat every failure, seriously.

The November-December peak season was a tremendously busy period for our staff members. Due to the increased package volumes – which were beyond forecasts and expectations – our postmen have had to make an average of an additional 20 doorstep deliveries daily. All postmen and delivery staff are also working beyond their usual hours to help process and support these volumes. We hired extra resources, recalled personnel and activated teams from the corporate office on Saturdays just to meet the demand as well but our service quality still suffered as a result.

Being in the service industry, we depend on our frontline staff members to provide the best experiences for our customers and inevitably, there will be employees who may not act in the best interests of the company. We have experienced service failures due to the individual actions of a few employees. We are aware that this not only reflects badly on our organisation but undermines the hard-work, commitment and dedication that the majority of our Postal staff are displaying every single day. Such behaviour will not be tolerated.

While this aims to provide some background on the challenges experienced, these are not excuses for the issues that have been raised. We value the integrity and trust we have built as an organisation over 160 years and are now focused on rebuilding that trust.

We, at SingPost, value our position in the local community and acknowledge we only have that honour because of the support of our customers – you are the core of our business. We assure you that we will be vigorous in reviewing and revising our operational procedures, so that you will receive your letters, packages and parcels without delay, without hassle, and most importantly, without frustration.

Please bear with us, as we seek your patience to transform and serve you better. This remains our commitment to all of our customers and we would like to thank you for your feedback.

From all of us at SingPost, we are sorry for the inconvenience and hardship caused.

Well, at least an apology, and finally they’re taking responsibility for their “service failures”.

But of course netizens aren’t happy because they realised SingPost has kind of put the blame on the peak periods.

Nevertheless, an apology is still an apology.

It’s now not the peak season, so let’s see if postmen are still collection-slip-men.

Watch this for a complete summary of what REALLY happened to Qoo10, and why it's like a K-drama:

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George Yang
Email: [email protected]