Let’s face it: It is impossible to trust the South African Postal Service with any delivery – my “priority express” Parcel from the US was shipped middle of August and can not be traced. Although SAPO has Mark Barnes as the new CEO, judging from his Twitter account @mark_barnes56, he seems to be more focused on holidays instead of making any drastic changes to how SAPO should operate.

I don’t think any sane person would order anything of value from SAPO as there is a 90% chance that the item will be lost and there is a good 100%-chance that the item will never be delivered on time.

During my recent hobby project I needed Ubiquiti network equipment which was extremely expensive to source locally (about twice the overseas price) and I then discovered that I could use Aramex Global Shopper (AGS) as a freight-forwarding service to get products delivered which typically do not ship to South Africa. AGS works fairly simple:

• You sign up (FNB customers can do this for free, alternatively there are also discount codes where the life-time membership will only cost USD 10)
• You receive your “own” postal address for a number of countries (UK, US, Germany, France, China etc)
• You order for example from Amazon US and then deliver to your AGS postal address in the US
• AGS will take delivery of the parcel, take a picture of it (out of my 5 parcels they took one wrong picture and for 3 parcels no picture at all) and notify you
• You then upload the invoice for the parcel
• AGS will request payment of duties, shipping fee etc
• You pay via credit-card or Paypal
• AGS will forward the parcel to your local South African address

The above sounds beautiful, especially since you can now order from some more exotic mom-and-pop shops all over the world who usually charge insanely expensive delivery fees, only ship via postal mail (means the parcel gets either stolen or lost) or do not ship outside of their country at all.

AGS customer service and processing is inefficient

The web-interface is just outright horrible. It lacks any sort of detail. What makes it even worse is the poor processing and customer service. In December I used Amazon Prime (free same-day priority shipping) and placed a few orders with delivery to my AGS New York address and the following pretty much explains where things go horribly wrong:

My experience with Aramex Global Shopper has been a complete disaster so far – I placed 5 orders with Amazon using Amazon Prime which will deliver either same day or next day for free. Out of the 5 parcels:

• Parcel-1: Delivered to AGS on 27/12. It had two pictures (one was for another customer). It took two days for them to process the uploaded invoice. It took another 24 hours to acknowledge credit card payment. Delivery might happen tomorrow (3rd January 2017)
• Parcel-2: Delivered to AGS on 29/12. Picture was taken. Invoice uploaded 29/12. Still shows “Need invoice”. No idea when parcel will be delivered / processed.
• Parcel-3: Delivered to AGS on 29/12. Picture was taken. Invoice uploaded 29/12. Still shows “Need invoice”. No idea when parcel will be delivered / processed.
• Parcel-4: Delivered to AGS on 30/12. No picture of parcel. Invoice uploaded 30/12. Still shows “Need invoice”
• Parcel-5: Delivered to AGS on 31/12. No picture of parcel. Invoice uploaded 31/12. Still shows “Need invoice”

The website’s tracking is just horrible and lacks any sort of detail. Perhaps there is no more detail, but how can I understand why there has been no movement of the delivery for the parcel below, especially since I uploaded the invoice within hours of delivery to AGS:

When I phoned AGS South Africa today, it really appears that there is no additional tracking information available as the call-centre agent could not assist further. I was then advised to phone AGS Customs/Clearance department to find out why the parcel is “stuck” – to be honest, the AGS call-centre agent should do this for me as this very much reminds me of the SAPO days where one would have to hunt down a parcel for days (or to “convert” that international tracking number to a local tracking number in order to trace a delivery).

While the customer service agent did not sound very helpful and could not be really bothered to assist, if AGS could sort out the processing delays, their service would really attract more customers. I do understand that we are in “holiday mood” during the December period, but AGS has acknowledged that there offices are operational between 27/12 and 31/12 and I would have expected that my delivered parcels during that timeframe had been processed accordingly – unable to process 4 out of 5 parcels equates to a 80% failure rate. 60% of my parcels did not have a captured image either. Statistically it is impossible that I am the “odd customer” out. Perhaps the AGS staff working during those days are not as diligent as staff working on other days? Who knows? No-one can explain!

If AGS upped their game and actually processed and cleared parcels more efficiently, this service would really rock. Right now I think it is slightly above SAPO level and the only difference is that there is someone accountable for the processing (whereas with SAPO you are simply out of luck).

Some gotcha’s and where it can get expensive

Amazon and other online merchants will typically get orders out as quickly. This means that they will split an order into multiple parcels if necessary. It is important to understand that AGS does not collate parcels (other providers such as MyUS do) – this can become expensive very quickly as AGS charges shipping fees on weight: R 195 for first 1/2kg and R 99 for additional 1/2kg. Other providers will typically apply a discount when multiple parcels are shipped at the same time, but AGS does not seem to do this (FNB customers do however get some discount on shipping fees as well if paying via credit card).

Each order will incur shipping fees, import duties and VAT and it is important to consider this. Even more so when importing clothing or perfume as duties are sky-high. Despite the additional charges, most orders still work out cheaper than purchasing locally (just remember that most imported products are considered “grey import” and will not benefit local repair and warranty).

Many other users of AGS have also raised clearance delay issues (delays in processing uploaded invoices) and my delays do not seem to be related to the busier holiday season. I have separately raised the issues with AGS and hope that someone will explain the nature of the problems and how AGS will resolve the issues going forward.