Since going to Level 3 lockdown on Tuesday 28th April we have had many many issues with courier delays.

It seems as though everyone has hit those online stores that can now do deliveries. This has meant an overwhelming volume of freight for local couriers. This was highlighted recently in this article.

[NZ Herald] - Covid 19 coronavirus: Businesses front impacts of NZ Post courier service delays

Ben who is our manager for the Epic Beer HQ Taproom has been tasked with following up courier delays during lockdown. He has been overwhelmed with the number of delays, getting hold of the courier company (spending hours on hold listening to some very questionable music), and getting back to customers with some sort of answer.

A lot of times the couriers aren't giving us much information to feedback to customers as they themselves are struggling to get a handle on the huge surge in freight. when

We have also had the issue of our local courier driver only now doing one mid morning pick up (maybe this is because he is so busy with all the other pick ups in the area).

This isn't really acceptable due to us not being able to fill all the orders in time for that pick up time. Therefore we are having to load up our cars at the end of the day to take the days orders to the depot a few minutes around the corner.

The biggest issue we have identified is a drop off to the depot on the evening of the 29th April. There are eight parcels that have not moved from the depot in over a week. After calls everyday and no joy, we have thrown down a Karen and asked to talk to the manager. The response has been positive and helpful and we are just waiting to find out why these 8 boxes of beer destined for Auckland deliveries haven't moved in over a week.

We apologies to these customers and all our customers that have, and are experiencing delays. We are processing your online orders every day as they come in (excluding weekends) and are delivering them at the end of every day to the courier company. We can't do more than we are doing to get your orders out as fast as possible.

We know the majority of people are having a positive experience with many orders arriving the next day in Auckland and around the North Island.

If you haven't received your order in 5-7 days (currently) please do let us know. We don't get notifications of orders not being delivered, unless you let us know. We do our best to get you your order as fast as possible but once we have handed it to the courier company it is literally in there hands on how fast it gets to you.

UPDATE: 7 April Thursday evening when we arrived at the courier depot we were looking around for a wooden pallet to put our boxes on. We couldn't find one and the staff inside seem preoccupied with their stuff. We had a whole car full of 30+ case of beer and wondering where to put them so they weren't in the way. A guy walked up and he said just put them there. And we said "do you work here"? He said "yes" I'm the CEO. Ok, cool we will put them there then. He proceeded to help us unload the car. Which was very helpful. The staff inside quickly turned up to help, so guess he was the CEO. I didn't get his name, but thanks for the help.

UPDATE: 8 April Friday afternoon. Some way somehow we have a new courier driver that will now do pickups in the afternoon. Thank you to whomever was able to make this change happen so quickly in this time of chaos.

NOTE: We offer free shipping nationwide in New Zealand, with rural deliveries +$10. We DO NOT ship internationally except for T-shirts.