In the land of the blind...

On 13 December, Intertown Transport in George collected a parcel I sent (from the Aramex depo), to be delivered in a small town relatively close to George (160 km away). The package was shipped out the same day, but was then promptly returned with the reason: CANNOT FIND ADDRESS.

Upon inquiry, it surfaced that Intertown still send out some of their drivers without GPS devices. Even if this is acceptable practice for them to cut costs by not equipping their drivers properly, what baffles me is why they don't print the directions beforehand and attach it to the parcel for such drivers? Also, why did the driver not stop at one of the garages and ask for directions? Why did the driver not contact the recipient for directions?

On 14 December I phoned the number on the Intertown website and got through to the Intertown HO in Port Elizabeth. I spoke on a daily basis (workdays) with a lady by the name Joy, who stated each day that she had contacted the George office and they promised that the package will go out the very next morning, but the package simply didn't move. On 20 December she stopped taking my calls.

Later the same day (20 December) I finally got through to someone at the George facility (even Aramex could not get hold of anyone at the George office for quite a few days, apparently there was something wrong with their phone lines, but up until this day, neither the Manager (Bennita) nor the Operations Manager (Christopher) , who's numbers are listed on the Intertown website, answer their phones). I spoke to ***rie and I asked him whether I should rather ask someone to collect the package since it does not seem like they service that route regularly (given the parcel simply did not move for days, and the fact that I didn't hear from them once), but he indicated very convincingly that the package will be shipped the first thing very next morning, since he's in charge of what get's shipped, and when it get's shipped. I finally got hold of the man in charge!

Checking on 21 December, there was still no movement, and upon trying to get hold of ***rie, he simply did not answer my calls and did not bother to respond to my SMS message either.

Finally, I had to resort to asking someone to go and collect the parcel from Intertown George and then to deliver it to. At his time of arriving at Intertown (21 December, about 16h30), the parcel was still happily collecting dust in the Intertown warehouse, where it had been since last week 13 December.

I'm handing Intertown my award for worst company I've ever dealt with from a service delivery perspective, while the named employees win for being the most convincing in selling empty promises.

How this company had been chosen as external service provider by Amarex based on their "good service delivery", completely escapes me, but I guess in the land of the blind, Intertown Transport is king!