My confidence in Australia Post was high until two years ago. I like using traditional mail, despite doing most of my communication electronically: online shopping deliveries, business-related post and I am a sucker for an old-fashioned birthday card.

Before last week, my confidence was already low and now, with the news of chief executive Ahmed Fahour's obscene salary, it's close to zero.

Two years ago, I assumed the hiccups I was experiencing were simply because I had moved from a capital city to a small town. I reasoned that I couldn't expect the same level of service and I was happy to cop this as part of my sea change.

Still, two weeks for mail to get from northern NSW to Melbourne stretched the friendship of this reasoning. And when I dared use brown paper rather than an overly engineered "post pack", it took nearly a month.