OUR EXPERIENCE WITH FEDEX SOUTH AFRICA – A FORMAL PUBLIC COMPLAINT

OUR EXPERIENCE WITH FEDEX SOUTH AFRICA – A FORMAL PUBLIC COMPLAINT

If I could rate FedEx 0 starts I would

I don't normally believe in publicly naming and shaming a company or its employees. As a business, we understand that mistakes happen. Employees take leave. Emails get missed. Shipments encounter problems. Systems fail.

But there is a significant difference between an isolated service failure and a problem that continues for more than a year despite repeated calls, emails, complaints and escalation to senior management.

Unfortunately, our company's experience with FedEx South Africa has reached that point.

We have been working with FedEx for more than a year, and we are still attempting to obtain shipping, customs and supporting documentation relating to shipments dating back to early 2025.

Read that again: 2025.

These aren't documents we casually decided we would like to have. They form part of the records our business requires for its imports, accounting, customs and tax administration.

We have called. We have emailed. We have followed up. We have escalated. We have contacted different departments. We have raised complaints. We have involved senior people within FedEx. We have had to involve other parties when documentation could not be obtained.

And yet here we are, still chasing historical documents.

At this point, I believe it is fair for other South African businesses to know what our experience has been.

One of our primary contacts has been Bianca van Woerden. We worked with Bianca for a number of months, but particularly since early 2026, obtaining consistent assistance has become increasingly difficult.

On numerous occasions when we have needed assistance, we have been advised that she is unavailable, away from the office, on leave or otherwise unable to assist us at that time.

The problem isn't that an employee takes leave. Everyone is entitled to leave.

The problem is that a business customer's ability to obtain critical documentation should not effectively stop because one contact person is unavailable.

We have repeatedly tried to obtain reliable alternative assistance and have reached a point where we simply cannot continue operating this way.

Our concerns have also gone beyond an ordinary customer-service escalation.

We have personally dealt with Leon Bruwer, Managing Director – Sales, FedEx Sub-Saharan Africa, regarding our FedEx matters, and we have records of those communications.

When a business has already reached the point of engaging with senior management and is still chasing documentation from the previous year, the issue can no longer reasonably be dismissed as one missed email or one bad customer-service interaction.

FedEx's own South African corporate documentation identifies Nelson Teixeira as Head of FedEx Express South Africa, while FedEx also identifies him as Managing Director of Operations for Sub-Saharan Africa.

This is therefore something I would respectfully ask FedEx's South African and Sub-Saharan African leadership to look at seriously.

Because the most concerning part of our experience isn't simply that something went wrong.

It's how difficult it has been to get someone to take ownership of fixing it.

Customer service has unfortunately not provided a reliable solution either.

I have personally spent an unreasonable amount of time calling departments, explaining the same situation repeatedly, sending emails and following up on requests.

Far too often, the response is an automated acknowledgement rather than an actual resolution.

There is only so many times a customer should have to explain:

We need our shipment documents.

For companies involved in international trade, documentation isn't an optional extra.

Businesses may need commercial invoices, courier invoices, customs documentation, clearance records and VAT-related documentation for accounting, banking, customs and tax purposes.

We should not have to conduct what feels like an investigation every time we need documentation relating to our own shipments.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that FedEx publicly promotes its commitment to supporting businesses and SMEs with global trade and logistics solutions.

Our actual experience has fallen dramatically short of the standard we expected.

Our company runs a tight ship. We hold ourselves accountable when something goes wrong, and we expect our service providers to do the same.

We have deliberately avoided making this public for a long time because our preference has always been to resolve matters professionally and directly.

But businesses also have a responsibility to one another.

If another company is considering entrusting an important part of its import or export operation to a logistics provider, I believe it is fair that they hear the experiences of existing customers—the good and the bad—so that they can make an informed decision.

So, based specifically on our company's experience, I cannot currently recommend FedEx South Africa to another business that depends heavily on prompt access to shipping and customs documentation.

If you are considering using FedEx for business imports or exports, my recommendation would be to establish, before shipping anything, exactly who will be responsible for your account, who your backup contact will be, how you will obtain historical customs and shipment documentation, and what escalation procedure exists if your normal contact is unavailable.

Keep your own records.

Keep every email.

Keep every reference number.

Keep every waybill.

And keep copies of every document you receive.

Because based on what we have experienced, you may need them.

At this point, it genuinely feels as though we would have had better luck sending our document requests by carrier ***eon. At least then we could reasonably expect the ***eon to eventually come back carrying something other than an automated response.

The joke is intentional.

The underlying situation is not.

We aren't asking FedEx for special treatment.

We aren't asking for compensation through a social-media post.

We aren't interested in attacking employees personally.

We want something considerably simpler:

Give us the outstanding documentation relating to our shipments.

Give our business a reliable point of contact and an alternative contact when that person is unavailable.

Respond meaningfully to our outstanding complaints.

And take ownership of resolving a problem that has been allowed to continue for far too long.

If FedEx resolves this properly, I will be equally willing to publicly acknowledge that resolution.

But until that happens, this is an accurate account of the experience our company has had with FedEx South Africa, supported by the correspondence and records we have retained.