Paid R1400 for birth certificate but no documents received!

I employed Doc Aid to assist with collecting my birth certificate and retention of citizenship letter from the Department of Home Affairs in March 2022. I am currently living overseas and to date (October 2022) I have received no documents, even though I paid 50% upfront amounting to R1400.

I have had sporadic communication with Jan and Karin from Doc Aid at various times throughout the process; they communicated that DHA would not hand over the documents and so had submitted a new application for me that would be ready in August which I was fine with.

However, after 7 emails, 2 WhatsApp messages, and 3 phone calls later, I haven't had a reply in months. Emails and messages go ignored and they don't answer when you call them. My husband is a journalist for a massive online news publication in South Africa and has tried to get in contact to hear their side of the story - he has totally been ignored too.

I feel completely ****med and am appalled at how this business operates - clearly another fly-by-night, so avoid at all costs.