Almost TWO MONTHS to deliver my pipe.

On 5th December 2017 I placed and paid for an order of pipe from DPI in Belville. It did not arrive before close of business over the December holidays. At this stage we were not in a massive rush and I believed our order would arrive as soon as business opened in January. It did not. After querying our order, we were told that the person dealing with our order had left the company and so it was never completed. (Important note, two other people were cc'd in on the order so surely they should have completed handling our order?) We resent our proof of payment as per request and then for some reason they wanted the original quote sent through, which we sent. Again, simply searching our email would have brought up all the information required by the two other people who handled the order. The pipe still did not arrive, no phone calls were received, no emails, no communication as to the whereabouts of our order. More phone calls. According to DPI they had been to the house twice to deliver but no one was home. I work from home and had received many other deliveries from other companies. However, I am not house bound, I do go out, so perhaps they had tried to deliver. But why had no one phoned me or my husband? They said they would try deliver the next day, Friday if not Friday then Saturday or Monday afternoon. This is ridiculous, choose a day and commit to delivering on that day. The order is already over a month late, make it a priority! On Monday lunchtime, I was called out on an emergency, we called DPI to let them know and were told they would deliver the next day. Later on Monday they called to say they would not go out of their way to do a single delivery the next day, they would do it on Thursday with the other deliveries. As frustrated as I was I accepted this and waited all day on Thursday, no pipe arrived, no one called. When my husband called them they said they over loaded and could not get to us in time. Again, we should be a priority as the delivery was almost two months late! During this time clients of ours had to be updated everyday that their order was delayed due to a delay on our suppliers side. This not only made it look like we were disorganized not ensuring we had stock for orders, but lost us income as we offered our clients their orders for free as compensation for the poor service on our side. By now I was furious, I called their offices and completely lost my temper. But before I totally lost it I was faced with a staff member who repeatedly spoke over me, not once apologizing or offering to make us a priority but coming up with excuses. This was when I lost it. Now they were saying they had been to the house 3 times to deliver, before it was twice. I was passed on to their delivery man as I demanded my order be the first to be delivered in the morning before 10am as I had a meeting at 10am. The delivery man then said he had been to the house 4 times! Now it appeared they were lying to me to cover their ****s. I was told they could not promise delivery before 10am because of traffic. I left the conversation with a request that we be their first delivery. No one arrived before 10am, my husband waited until 11am, left a note on our bell to call me (with my number) in case they arrived while I was still out. I received no call, by 12:30 no one had arrived to deliver my pipe. I assume traffic was terrible to take 4.5hrs to get from Belville to Fish Hoek, which should only take 1hr. At this point I wrote an email and sent it to as many people as possible. My pipe arrive 30mins later. I have requested that my company get reimbursed for the pipe payment to try cover some of our income loss. We run a small company and our orders are small, we wouldn't make a dent in the bottom line of such a huge company that deliver to the farming and building industry both locally and internationally, but that does not give them the right to treat a small customer so badly. My complaint has been forwarded to the MD and I await his call on Monday. It is unacceptable that it should get to this point to have my voice heard. This will be the last time we order from them.