Hire some snails!

Item: SA Post Office
Rating: 1

When the inimitable Mark Barnes was appointed as the new CEO of the Post Office, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief in the hope that we'd see an end to the frankly pathetic service that the South African Post Office has become renowned for. Correction! The word "pathetic" implies the existence of service, so perhaps a more fitting turn-of-phrase would be *non-existent* service that the South African Post Office has become renowned for! My story is sadly not unique, but what does make it perhaps slightly interesting is that the person I eventually asked for help was not some half brain-dead call-centre agent or an overweight counter-jockey with the personality of a door, but the CEO, Mark Barnes himself! To summarise: I ordered some goods from a US based online retailer. My order was dispatched within 24 hours of clicking "buy now" and with no real urgency and not wanting to pay an arm and a leg for the international shipping, I chose to use the United States Postal Service (USPS) instead of some overpriced express courier service at a 4x price premium. The USPS collected the parcel from the vendor in California on the 17th of Aug and within 4 days (yes 4 days) the parcel arrived in South Africa. So far so good...right?! But that’s where the fanstasy ends. Despite the parcel making a 16 thousand km journey across the entire North American continent and across the entire Atlantic Ocean in only 4 days, the same parcel 30 days later and since being put in the care of the South African Post Office, has mysteriously been unable to make the final 24.7 km journey from O R Tambo Int. to Rosebank. To put this into perspective: A common garden snail (Cornu aspersum) with a blistering top speed of 0.047km/h could have delivered my parcel in less than 22 days! Again, I concede that my story is not unique, but what is interesting is that I happened to have Mr Barnes’ cell number (long story), so after countless visits to my local post office and dozens of calls to the call centre, I in desperation and with a genuine sense of embarrassment called Mr Barnes. I firstly apologised for bothering him with a matter as trivial as a lost parcel, understanding that he no doubt has much bigger fish to fire, oops I mean fry. Nevertheless Mark very graciously offered to help saying, (and I quote) “no bother at all, it’s my job. Send me an email with the details and I’ll get my ops people to track it down”. Needless to say I was elated, not only that he took the call but also secure in the knowledge that the BIG BOSS had the matter in hand and not just any BIG BOSS…Mark Barnes, a man famous for his no-nonsense approach to business. I sent the email together with the tracking number...all's well that ends well, right? Sadly 2 weeks after making the call to mark and sending the email, 6 more trips to the local post office, more calls to the call centre and three follow up emails to the BIG BOSS later…crickets. Maybe he should hire some snails!

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