This simply ridiculous postal error meant a guy didn't receive his package for two months.

The world is a complicated place.

It is a place full of intelligent people, brilliant discoveries and ingenious inventions.

But it is also a place where a package can be delivered to the wrong country five times simply because the names are similar.

A Reddit user this week exposed what we’re now learning is an all-too-common occurrence in the postal system.

Captioning an image of a parcel simply: “My brother waited two months for this package to arrive”, the user let the picture to the talking.

Because the package, clearly addressed to a location in Australia, had not one, but five stamps reading “Missent to Austria”.

Yes, that's right. The package, which from the US Postal Service logo we can tell was originally from the US, got mistakenly sent to Austria, instead of Australia, not once, but five times.

And you can tell the people at the post sorting centre in Austria were getting just a tad annoyed at receiving the same package repeatedly, with the words "again" scrawled in pen after one stamp and "five times" after another.

Thankfully, someone in the USPS finally got the message and sent the package to its correct address, where a guy was patiently waiting.

Reddit users had a good time making fun of the situation.

"I love how they felt a need to write and underline 'again' and '5 times' as well as the stamp. The WTF they must have been feeling," wrote one.

"'WTF this package again!! It the 3rd time this month'," joked another.

"'FFS America, this is Austria not Australia, look at an atlas for Christ sake or even just read the tags maybe.'"

However, it seems as idiotic as this mistake sounds, it actually happens regularly. A good indication of this is that there's actually a stamp posties can use for it.

Post office workers confirmed that the mistake also goes the other way.

"I have to sort letters marked "Austria" far most often than I expected before the job," shared one.

"I worked in the parcel sorting area at Australia Post. We got them ALL the time," agreed another.

Another postie informed that what doesn't help the situation is that both countries have four numbers in their postcodes.

And it seems it's not a problem unique to Austria and Australia.

"In South Australia we have a stamp for stuff meant for South Africa," one user shared.

Another pointed out that South Africa has a town called Adelaide - and both areas' postcodes are four digits beginning with the number five.

So if you're from Adelaide and your eBay purchase never arrived, you know who to call.

Have you ever waited a seriously long time for a package to arrive?