Lies about Registered Mail

I am absolutely disgusted by the complete lack of service and sheer incompetence of the South African Post Office, specifically regarding The Reeds and Lyttelton branches.

On 21 April 2026, I paid for 20 registered mail items at the Lyttelton Post Office, assuming that paying for a premium tracking service meant the post office would actually do its job. The items arrived at The Reeds branch on 24 April 2026, and the system updated to "First Notification to recipient."

For over an entire month, absolutely nothing happened. When I personally got hold of the recipients, not a single one of them had received a physical notification slip.

When I telephoned The Reeds branch to find out why these critical legal documents were just rotting in their back room, the staff were completely blasé. I was told that final notifications are sent "by hand" and that they had absolutely no idea when they would get around to doing it.

Fast forward to today, 5 June 2026: because the staff failed to deliver the slips, the items sat unclaimed past the 30-day window. SAPO has now officially sent the items back as "Return to Sender." To add insult to injury, the tracking system at Lyttelton has just updated to "First Notification to recipient"—meaning they are using their automated system to tell me to come pick up my own undelivered, wasted mail!

What exactly did I pay for? I paid for a delivery and notification service. Instead, SAPO failed the delivery, failed to notify the recipients, forced me to manually track down and digitally notify everyone myself, and has now looped the mail back to the start.

You are running a complete con game charging citizens for registered mail when your infrastructure has completely collapsed. I will never give this bankrupt entity another cent. Absolute *******.

Tracking Number Reference (As a starter example): PE***ZA