AVBOB EXPERIENCE

On the 1st of September my mom passed away at my house due to ill health. When all the procedures were followed and Avbob had to collect my mom’s body there only arrived one person. We had to help him load my mom’s body in the car which was quite traumatic as we were still in shock from my mom who just passed away.

On the Monday the 2nd we went to Avbob to make arrangements for my mother’s funeral as her wish was to be buried in Namibia. We spoke to Sharon who informed us that she does not know the procedure for overborder burials and she called Lorna the manager to come and talk to us. Lorna told us that they will only cover the costs up to the border and we should get another undertaker to make the arrangements on the Namibian side. When Avbob was still operating in Namibia they would have covered all the costs, but a few years back Avbob was sold to Nambob. We were told her policy will only pay R11000 although we made a rough calculation that she paid almost R100 000 into the policy over her life time. (62 years of payments).

We asked Lorna to get us a quotation from Nambob for the cost on the Namibian side. By Thursday we enquired about the quotation as it was not forthcoming. We then contacted Nambob directly for the quotation and got the ball rolling.

We informed both Avbob and Nambob that we would like to have the funeral in Namibia on the 27th of September which will give them more than enough time to make arrangements and they both agreed that it would be fine.

We did try on two occasions to get hold of Lorna to see how the arrangements were going but she never got back to us. We got email confirmation from Sharon on Monday the 23rd where she confirmed with Nambob that all is in order and they will make the exchange at the border on Thursday the 26th so that the funeral can be held on Friday the 27th.

We accepted that all is in order and drove up to Namibia on Wednesday the 25th. When we arrived in Namibia on the 26th, I got an email from Sharon at Avbob that said they had to cancel the transport as there was no export permit in place. This came as a complete shock to us! I also have email correspondence between Nambob and Avbob where Nambob specifically asked whether the export permits were in place as it is very important.The incompetence of Avbob was just mind boggling.

I phoned Sharon at Avbob and told her it was unacceptable as they had more than enough time to make the arrangements. It was only then that they jumped into action.

We held the memorial service on Friday the 27th as everything was already arranged. On Monday the 30th my brother had to fly his 2 daughters home, as they had school which was not only an extra expense for