Australia Post Parcel Scams: How to Check a Delivery Text Safely

Australia Post will never text you asking for money to release or redeliver a parcel — so a parcel text that asks for a fee has already told you what it is. That one sentence, straight from Australia Post's own published guidance, defeats nearly every parcel scam text landing on Australian phones. This guide shows you the rest: the safe 30-second check, the four fake texts doing the rounds, and the tap-by-tap way to check a real parcel on iPhone and Android.

The parcel scam works because it is timed like a coincidence and priced like a triviality. It arrives while you genuinely are waiting for something — the grandkids' birthday present, the thing you ordered on Tuesday — and it asks for fifty cents, or a dollar ninety-nine, an amount so small it feels silly to question. But the scammers were never farming fifty cents. The fee is the excuse; the prize is the card number you type to pay it, and the myGov or bank sign-in the fake page asks for next. In December the wave reaches its peak: with half the country waiting on Christmas parcels, Scamwatch and the Australian Federal Police put fake delivery texts at the very centre of their festive-season warnings. That is why this text is worth a full guide of its own: it is the most common scam text in the country, and parcel impersonation sits near the very top of the ACMA's SMS impersonation reports.

What Australia Post Will Never Ask You

Australia Post never asks you to pay money, or to hand over personal or financial details, through a text message, email or phone call in order to receive a parcel. That is their own stated rule, and it has no exceptions for small amounts, urgent deadlines, or parcels "held at the depot". Australia Post also never asks you to pay a redelivery fee — if a delivery could not be made, the genuine process leaves a card in your letterbox or a notice in the official app, and rebooking a delivery is free through the real channels.

So when a text says a fee is owed, you are not looking at a new Australia Post policy. You are looking at a scam wearing an Australia Post coat. The same rule protects you with every other courier: DHL, Toll, Sendle and the rest do not collect surprise payments through text links either. Any company whose parcel genuinely needs action from you can be reached the safe way — through its official app, its real website typed by your own fingers, or, for Australia Post, by phone on 13 76 78 (that's 13 POST).

Here is the second half of the rule, for the texts that arrive wearing no name at all. Since July 2026, parcel texts sent under a business name that is not on Australia's SMS Sender ID Register arrive labelled 'Unverified' — one more reason a parcel text deserves your slowest, calmest reading. Our full guide to scam texts in Australia explains the label, and its spoke guide to 'Unverified' text messages walks through exactly what to do when you see it.

The Four Parcel Texts Doing the Rounds

The fakes change their wording weekly, but they are built from four scripts. These examples are written by us, to show the pattern — real scam texts use the same shapes, the same small sums, and the same deadlines.

One detail catches thoughtful people, so let's name it: sometimes the text knows your name, or your suburb, or that a parcel is genuinely on its way. That is not proof it is real. Names and suburbs leak from old data breaches and social media, and delivery texts are sent by the million precisely because at any moment, a good share of the country really is waiting for a parcel. It is a fishing net, not a personal letter — and it feels personal by design.

Check Your Parcel the Safe Way — iPhone

If you have the official Aus Post app, checking takes under a minute and never touches the text. If you don't have the app, the website route below works on any iPhone.

1. Close the text message. Leave it sitting there; you can deal with it after the check.
2. Open the Aus Post app from your home screen — the app you installed yourself. No app? Open Safari and type auspost.com.au letter by letter, then tap Track.
3. Find your tracking number. It is in the email receipt or dispatch message from the shop you actually bought from — it starts with letters and numbers like 33XPL or a long string of digits. Type or paste that number in, never a number copied from the suspicious text.
4. Read what the real system says. If it shows your parcel moving normally, the text was fake. If it shows a genuine problem — a missed delivery, a parcel awaiting collection — the app itself gives you the real, free options.
5. Finished: go back and deal with the fake text — forward it to 7726, then block the number (the two-minute routine is in our Australia scam texts guide).

If your parcel genuinely is awaiting collection, the app or the card in your letterbox tells you which post office holds it, and collecting it costs nothing and needs only your ID — never a payment link from a text.

Check Your Parcel the Safe Way — Android

The routine is the same on a Samsung, Google Pixel or any other Android phone; only the app names differ slightly.

1. Close the Messages app without tapping anything inside the text.
2. Open the Aus Post app if you have it, or open Chrome and type auspost.com.au yourself, then tap Track.
3. Enter the tracking number from your email receipt or the seller's dispatch email — the one from the shop, not from the text.
4. Compare. Real problem in the real system? Follow the app's own options. Nothing there? The text was the entire problem, and it is now solved.
5. Forward the fake to 7726: in the conversation, press and hold the message, tap the three dots, choose Forward, and send it to 7726. Then block the number from the same menu. Our guide to blocking spam texts on Android turns on the filter that quietly eats most of these before you ever see them.

On iPhone, the matching setting is Filter Unknown Senders — our guide to stopping spam texts on iPhone sets it up in a couple of minutes. With either filter on, the parcel texts mostly land in a junk folder you never have to open.

"But I Really Am Expecting a Parcel Today"

This is the situation the scam is designed for, so it deserves a direct answer: expecting a parcel changes nothing about the check, and the check changes nothing about your parcel. The scammers do not know you ordered anything. They send the same text to millions of phones, on the certainty that thousands of those phones belong to people waiting for a delivery that day. When the text lands on one of those mornings, it feels aimed. It is not aimed — it is arithmetic.

So run the check exactly as written above, with a clear conscience about the real parcel. If your parcel genuinely missed you, three honest things happen, none of them a text asking for money: a card appears in your letterbox, the event appears in the Aus Post app, and the parcel waits for you at a post office for days. Nothing about your real delivery is harmed by ignoring a text for an hour — or forever. And if you want a human voice instead of an app, call Australia Post on 13 76 78 and ask about the parcel using your tracking number. That number is printed on Australia Post's own website; it is safe because you found it here and dialled it yourself, not because a text handed it to you.

Already Paid the Fee or Typed Your Card? Your First 10 Minutes

Breathe first. A fifty-cent "fee" payment does not mean fifty cents is all you risk — it means someone now holds your card details — but acting in this order, now, is what keeps the damage small.

1. Call your bank, immediately, on the number printed on the back of your card. Tell them you entered your card details on a page a text sent you to. They can cancel the card, watch the account and block the follow-on charges scammers usually try within the hour.
2. If you also typed a password — myGov, email, banking — change it from the official app or by typing the real website address yourself. If it was your myGov password, call the Scams and Identity Theft Helpdesk on 1800 941 126 as well.
3. If you gave personal details like your date of birth or Medicare number, call IDCARE on 1800 595 160 — Australia's free national identity support service. A real person will build you a recovery plan.
4. Report it at ReportCyber (cyber.gov.au) and to Scamwatch at scamwatch.gov.au. Banks do sometimes recover money reported within hours — later is the only wrong time.
5. Forward the text to 7726, block the number, and email the fake to Australia Post at [email protected], then delete it. Your report helps stop the same text reaching your neighbour.
6. Tell a family member today. Not as a confession — as a warning. These texts run in waves, and the same household often gets the sequel.

And hold your head up while you do it: these messages are engineered by professionals to catch busy, trusting people at exactly the wrong moment. The people who call the bank within the hour are the ones who come out of it whole.

Other Couriers, Same Costume

Everything in this guide applies word-for-word when the text wears a different coat. DHL, Toll, Sendle, Amazon and a dozen smaller couriers are all impersonated the same way, with the same small fees and the same deadlines. The defence never changes: never pay or sign in through a text; open that company's official app or type its real website yourself; check with the tracking number from your purchase email. If the company has no record of a problem, there is no problem.

Our earlier guide to recognising a fake delivery text gives you five more signs to check in any delivery message, from any country — the sender's address, the greeting, the web address spelt almost-right. Read the two together and you have the complete delivery-text defence. And when the big sales arrive — Click Frenzy, Black Friday, Boxing Day — the parcel texts arrive in a flood behind them; our sales-season scam shield introduces all five seasonal fakes in one place, so you have met them before they meet you.

The 10-second version: Australia Post never texts you asking for money. A parcel text with a fee or a link is a scam — even when you really are expecting a parcel.

The 3-minute routine: check the parcel in the official app with the tracking number from your email, forward the text to 7726, block the number.

The golden rule: the text is never the checkout. Real parcels are checked in the real app — through a door you open yourself.