Post Office . . .gone AWOL.

We went to Carindale shopping centre yesterday. Its one of the biggest malls in this area. They have all the big shops like Myers and David Jones, along with lots of boutique shops, and all the usual supermarkets etc, lots of coffee places and has large wide airy walking spaces, in general a nice place to wander around.

 

 

I was on the lookout for a particular type of glass, and thought I would find it there. I also wanted to pay an account and thought I would do it at the Post office. Actually the Post Offices in Aussie are really good, they provide a huge number of services, not only postal but you can pay all sorts of accounts there.

We used to get to the Post Office from the car park easily, and as usual took the escalators up to level 2. The Post Office has gone! There is a car place there instead selling some sort of posh car! We asked where it was and was  told it was in Terry Whites Chemist. (You might think that is a dopey place for a Post Office....so did I)

We found Terry Whites Chemist and they told us the Post Office was just an agency in their other store on the ground floor. Well we walked almost the width and breadth of the mall looking for this small chemist hidden away.

‘Post office?’ I asked?

‘Yes….but just an agency’.

‘I want to pay an account,’ I said.

‘No, we just do postage. You have to go to a different place to find the Post Office now if you want to pay an account. There is no proper Post Office in the mall.’

How crazy is that! A huge mall, visited by thousands of people a week, and not a Post Office in the place!

One lady said, ‘I think people were getting fed up with the long lines at the Post Office that meant it blocked some of the shoppers from moving around freely.’

‘You would think that showed a need for the place here then!’ I said.

She just shrugged her shoulders and said it had gone.

That is the dopiest thing I have come across in a long time. Every mall I can think of has a Post Office attached somewhere, but not this one.

Australia Post needs to take a look at this one I reckon!

 

 

 

 

 

Day trip to Carindale.

The Carindale Shopping Centre has had a face lift, and I haven’t been since it opened some time ago.

 Because this house sit is not far from Brisbane, it’s easy to go into some of the bigger shopping centres for a day trip. I was looking forward to some new shops, and hoping to buy a couple of pieces of clothing for the summer.

I have to say, it was a really disappointing trip. There were some new shops, but it mostly seems to be for the younger ones. Perhaps they are the ones with more disposable income these days. As I do not have a nymph-like figure, I was looking for some larger sized clothing. Well, there seemed to be little around, and what there was didn’t appeal at all.

A couple of my favourite shops have gone, Millers and Katies are no longer there, and K Mart apparently was never there, but I didn’t realise that. They have certainly improved the size of the mall generally, but the food court was the same size.

One of the things I found a bit tricky was the lack of information. They had touch screen information points, but they seemed really limited in what you could ask them, and there were no brochures with the layout of the mall, well I didn’t see any.  I know there is a concierge desk somewhere, but I didn’t come across that.

Then the parking. This is one of the malls that has introduced parking fees after the first three hours. We knew that before we went in and collected our ticket as we entered. We stayed about four hours, so knew we would have to pay something. But what we didn’t know was that you had to pay it as you left the mall building and before you went to the parked car. We didn’t’ see any signs to tell us that! We drove to the exit boom gate and were stuck. The machine told us we had to pay $3, and to put our credit card in, but it wouldn’t accept it. The cancel button didn’t work. We were stuck there with other cars pulling up behind us, unable to go forward. Peter tried backing up, making those behind us also back up, but that was dangerous. So I got out and found an emergency button, pressed that and spoke to a lady who informed us we should have paid at the mall. She said she would raise the boom gate so we could exit, and next time we should pay as we left the building.

Blow that. The shops I like have gone, and the parking is a bit of a pain. We are not keen to return. We’ll stick to something like the Helensvale Mall, free parking, easy to get at and has all the shops I want.