Parastatal or parasite?

I've been doing a lot of online shopping from foreign apps since February 2017 and since the post office does not deliver packages door to door, regardless of size, I've been collecting it from my local post office. For the most part, I have not been charged any additional fees. Shopping abroad, however, I do accept that customs duty may be charged on certain items. Having said that, up to now, no one at the post office has been able to give me a satisfactory answer on what the criteria for this is. To illustrate, I was charged R80+ customs duty on a track top that cost R40, including shipping, which was not even a brand name item, however I was not charged customs on a smart watch and a top that cost almost R300 each. In September, a clerk at the post office informed me that, with immediate effect, a R24 manifest charge would be levied against all registered parcels. Yesterday, I was informed that, going forward, a R24 handling fee would be charged on ALL parcels from abroad, regardless of size or value. The clerk was very apologetic and clearly embarrassed having to convey this. What on earth is the post office playing at? A "handling fee" for what? Parcels are not delivered door to door. The South African Post Office's app is a joke. All parcels are posted with a tracking number but 95% of it cannot be tracked once it reaches South Africa. Those that you can track remain with the jhb mail center and/or Cape Town hub for anything from 2 weeks to 2 months with no explanation for the delay. The post office's customer service department does not reply to queries in this regard. I wait on average 2-3 months for a single item to arrive so clearly the post office is not doing anything to expedite the customs clearing process. Is it even lawful to charge a fee higher than the cost of the item? (SARS got the blame for that one). I'm at a loss as to what exactly it is that they are "handling". Does anyone even bother to read the reviews on public forums and is no one concerned that the public views the national postal service as inefficient and *********** and would prefer to use courier services? Social media has pretty much made a lot of the post office's services redundant only to have its bacon saved by online shopping. Now, with this move (just in time to profit from Christmas), you can can rest assured that your customer base will become a good deal smaller when people realize that it is a good deal cheaper, faster and more reliable to buy online and use a courier.