Honest TEMU South African review

Howzit guys. Wanted to hop on here to share my experience with Temu ordering from South Africa. I ordered and paid for the items on the Temu app on the 10th of March. I ordered 10+ small items and the amount came up to just over R1000. Between the 10th and the 15th of March I got regular updates stating when the payment was confirmed, when they are awaiting shipment, when the order was being packed etc. On the 15th of March I got a message saying "Customs VAT and duty can be paid now, please pay in time." I got an email with all the information on how much duties came up to (just under R200) and I made the payment. Then between the 15th and the 20th it arrived at the warehouse in SA. Up to this point I had no issues.

Temu uses Buffalo couriers to deliver their packages. When looking at their reviews it was not looking very promising. Between the 21st and the 26th they had 4 "attempted deliveries" and kept on getting returned, reason being "No one at home" even though there was always someone at home. I tried emailing, phoning, using their online website but Buffalo is very useless in that case. No responses whatsoever. From there I got a message on the 28th telling me that my package is in transit to a third party express. When researching that what it means is that they are dropping the package off at a different courier to do the final delivery to the destination. Today is the 4th of the next month and I just received an SMS this morning at 8:15am saying "Your parcel from Buffalo Logistics is out on delivery today with DPD." By 11:00am I got a call and the DPD driver was outside with the package. The package was mostly wrapped in plastic and bubble wrap which was a bit frustrating because some of the items in it were fragile but when opening everything was fine. All 10+ of the items I ordered were in great condition and I am happy with everything that I ordered. The reason for the 3 star is mostly based off of the courier choice (being buffalo) but at the end of the day the parcel arrived within 3 weeks of ordering which I can't really complain about. I will order from Temu again just keeping in mind that I might have hastles with the couriers.