Doubled Fees / Delays / Valuables broken

We were forced to pay more than double the value of the original contracted fees.

They never filled out the correct immigration paperwork; continually got our address wrong; and several valuable goods arrived broken and damaged.

Their CEO never rep**** or responded to any requests to intervene after many requests to his team.

We were held to ransom 3 times before we were able to get our shipment finally delivered after 5 months.

- We had a contracted rate, but when we requested them to ship our items and add a few paintings they doubled the amount payable to them despite offering to do this as we were below our initial weight. They refused to give us a breakdown of how they got to this new amount. They basically said pay an additional R40,000 or you will miss the boat and have to wait a few more months.

- The shipment took months to get to New York as we watched it go from Cape Town to Durban and around Europe. I’ve subsequently learned that they use inferior shipping routes.

- When our goods arrived at port they never responded to their carrier agent here (Schumacher) and we were forced to reply to a request in 24 hours to submit information (which they should have done).

- Because of their delay, we were forced to pay demurrage fees of another $700.

- After that, Schumacher Logistics, their shipping agent in the USA, refused to ship from their warehouses alleging that SA Relocations had not paid their bills to them and owed them hundreds of thousands of Rands.

We were told by Schumacher that “We issued our service invoice to them [SA Relocations] back on November 5, 2021 for $14,722.74. As of today they have not paid us.”

- We were therefore forced to pay a third additional “penalty” payment to get our goods out as at this point we had no option and were not getting any response from the CEO of South African Relocations.

They seemed really nice in the beginning but unfortunately when things went wrong they became unresponsive and their owner has still to this date never rep**** to an email or bothered to call us.

I’m concerned for those out there that may use their services. You are welcome to contact me via Hello Peter, and I will give you further details of our terrible experience.