It was about a month ago now when we told you about Australia Post’s new Parcel Send application, and one very worrying restriction that – in the circumstances – didn’t make an awful lot of sense.
For reasons that are unclear, Australia Post decided to block access to the app on handsets or tablets that have been rooted. Presumably with the goal of protecting users data against nefarious apps or things that would steal their data, Australia Post have ensured that installing this app on a rooted device will ensure, simply, that the app doesn’t work at all:
By so doing, Australia Post have denied many users the ability to use their app, presumably in the somewhat ill-informed hope that this will protect some users’ data. We didn’t understand this, and we still don’t, so we approached Australia Post through their social media and through their media relations teams for comment. Seems that wasn’t a wise use of our time:
@auspost still wanting to discuss the new Parcel Send app with your digital content manager for @ausdroid and its ROOT restrictions.
— Daniel Tyson (@phroghollow) September 22, 2013
@Ausdroid Thanks for your patience. There isn’t someone you can speak with but the Management team will review your comments. Sorry –Rory
— Australia Post (@auspost) September 25, 2013
There’s not much more to say. We tried to raise these issues with Australia Post but they’re not interested in talking to us. I guess that tells you what they think about the concerns of users with rooted handsets. I don’t know about you, but I read their response as “go jump, Australia Post doesn’t care”.
With that in mind, if you’ve got a rooted handset, don’t bother using this app. It won’t work. Job well done Australia Post.
I use Auspost all the time at work. My Nexus 4 is rooted, App works just fine!
Am I missing something here? What part of the app isn’t working, the “Track An Item” is working at least.
It’s the Parcel Send App – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.auspost, not the AusPost – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.auspost.android app.
Well this plainly sucks! I’m an Aussie, use Aus Post (don’t we all from time to time) and I have a rooted Android phone. So clearly I’d love to install and use this app. Well, I simply won’t waste my time. Aus Post, you’re a bunch of fools.
Yet another attention/drama seeking article. Still, a nice change from the usual ‘this is how HTC should be run’ posts and advertisements for Angry Birds/PvZ.
BTW the Twitter callout was downright unprofessional. Consider using FB next time for more exposure.
Unprofessional? That’s how companies manage their PR nowadays – through Twitter.
Just another large company with a poorly designed app. Look at CommBank, they herald Kaching as their premier mobile banking app, at the same time the CommSec app won’t even run on major handsets like the S4.
You got that reply from them today and decided to rage-post straight away that they “refuse” to talk to you? From their reply it just looks like they need to review your enquiry and they’ll be getting back to you. Not unusual in situations like this. There’s only so much you can say and reply to on Twitter – why are you even using Twitter to contact them in the first place? Just calm down, or else you’ll find a bunch of people starting to not want to talk to ‘Ausdroid’ in future.
You need to learn to read before going on a rant mate. Ausdroid posted an article about this app on AUGUST 22nd. Today was a follow up post since Australia Post didn’t bother replying to the first article as well as the followup tweet on the 22nd Sept.
Highly likely that they had a meeting with Telstra (you do realise they are all buddy buddy don’t you?) it probably went something like this… Australia Post: What do you think of our app? Telstra: it’s great. You probably could have made it a bit more bloated, like we did with our data usage monitoring app. You know, fill it full of ad’s, make it nearly 10mb in size and then get Google to pull all of the better apps that are 140k in size written by our suckers (cough) customers. Australia Post: haha But seriously, we didn’t want to… Read more »
I have a rooted S4…… I just use hide my root and parcel send works fine!
I still don’t get the root issue. All my banking apps work. You can imagine the discussions with AusPost management:
Do you want root detection enabled?
What’s that?
It’s just an option, we can detect if a phone is rooted?
What’s that?
Ahh, it means if a phone has admin access we can block the application?
Admin access? Access to what?
Their own phone.
What could they do?
Make changes to the phone.
That sounds terrible, we should block that!
Just because they didn’t respond as expected doesn’t mean they are rude, AP has some standards and procedures, they replied that “management team will review shortly”, Thats a polite answer. Not every person follows ausdroid (I mean not every one is a geek). Twitter is used as publicity not for customer feedback point, May be you should have asked in a formal way (this is just my thought)
This was the second time since the release of the Parcel Send App that we had asked for and been denied a contact with someone at Australia Post to discuss this situation.
Excellent use of taxpayer money?
Chris, the attitude you note about AP over the app, is their NORMAL attitude to all customer complaints and enquiries. Folks in the Whirlpool threads discussing problems with AP see that in bulk.
Australia Post, We don’t deliver.
They do deliver as long as
a. You don’t want delivery in a hurry and
b. Your handset isn’t rooted.
Sorry, you can’t have this letter. Our records show that you have a rooted Android phone.
And it doesn’t contain LIon batteries ….