Stressful services and seriously short-changed. My bad experience having large quantiites of soil delivered

I rarely write reviews - either positive or negative - unless truly motivated to do so. My negative reviews are especially motivated solely by the aim to make sure others do not suffer the same fate as myself rather than any sense of vindictiveness.

I can honestly say I had one of the worst experiences I have had in Cape Town dealing with workman-like services with TBZ Removals. The specified order was to have three cubic metres of lawn dressing delivered to my residential property for R2910 all inclusive.

What made my bad experience even worse was that I had used the service before and they had been more than competent. They knew from the first delivery that I have a steep drive and I live on a narrow public access road. The first time I needed the majority of the day to shift the soil from the bottom to the top where my garden is situated. It took us the best part of 5 hours with three workers and same number of wheelbarrows to achieve this.

So when they arrived 4 hours late with no forewarning they would be late to make arrangements with the workers or wheelbarrows I had already hired, I was already panicking.

The correct load delivered at 2pm instead of 10am would have meant that we might not have finished in time and I might have left my narrow public access road blocked after-hours.

When they did arrive though, what they delivered was far less than what we had agreed.

They literally delivered half the load they had delivered the first time. When I tried to reason with the owner - one "Abbas" - he was having none of it. His argument was that they had over-delivered on the first load. I cannot verify exactly the weight delivered except it was definitely half the load before and took less than an hour and a half to shift with the same resources compared to the first time.

The cliched phrase '****************' is too often banded about - but in this case I honestly feel it is justified.

Please - do not use this company. There are many similar ones just like it that offer a far more professional service.