Poor service delivery and handling of complaint

I used DHL to send an envelope on 27 February 2026 to my children in the UAE via Post Zone Jeffreys Bay. The envelope contained original documents of my daughter and son-in-law. They need to present these documents to local authorities because they want to leave UAE in July 2026 due to their contracts that will be terminated by end June 2026.

The documents arrived in a very damaged state. The documents were soaking wet and the letters and stamps were smashed and unclear. The envelope was opened and torn and had a smell of smoke. The local authority does not want to accept some of the documents because of the water damage. We are now in a predicament to apply and replace these documents in South Africa before they can leave the country.

We sent a complaint and claim via Post Zone to DHL and claimed the R6259.00 expenditure for the courier costs and application fee for the documents. We also requested an explanation. We send photos of all the docs as well as proof of expenditure.

Througout the process we got the impression that we are the ones that are being investigated and that we are the culprits or taking a chance. At the end they used very poor excuses and their policy to only offer us a re-imbur*****t of R284,31. I refused the offer and requested them to rather keep it. NO EXCUSES. NO EXPLANATION.

It is such a shame that nobody even contacted me directly to apologize for the inconvenience caused by this poor service delivery. They could have at least offered us the courier cost that we paid.

DHL sucks.