Zero Transparency, Zero Professionalism, Zero Honesty - That's The Courier Guy

I would not recommend this company in any lifetime. To any companies looking into adding a courier company to their ****nal, the Courier Guy is really not it. They are quite frankly dishonest, with no moral issues in not being transparent and clearly do not know how to operate as a functional business. Here, I'll explain a few experiences I had with them. Also, worth mentioning, when liaisoning with other courier companies and explaining to them the Courier Guy's rates, even they are shocked at their rates.

I work and manage an e-commerce site, and we added the Courier Guy to our courier services, as they had advertised themselves as being cheaper than most courier companies and as being reliable. Well, boy were we in for a surprise. In the 20+ years that we have been in business and working with numerous courier companies, I have never been this shocked and disgusted by a level of service. They advertised themselves as offering courier for parcels below 5kg for main areas as R65 (excl. VAT). To our surprise, this only counts in Gauteng. Send it to any main area such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, even areas in Rustenburg, and you'll be charged twice or thrice the amount they advertised. MAIN AREAS. Putting that aside, when you need to locate a parcel, their customer service is absolutely useless, you'll have to consistently be on their case until (hopefully) something happens. Now, let's be honest, most companies nowadays don't really have the best service, especially larger ones, so when you manage a business you have to let some things go.

Here's the kicker, here's the thing that left me stumped, stupified, and just downright livid. We send large parcels to a few stores in the country and retrieve a lot of our materials from KZN, and the few times we used the Courier Guy, we found the rates to be reasonable and sometimes at a good cost. So, when we sent a second parcel, only two weeks from the previous one with them, I could not believe the invoice I received. You see the first parcel consisted of two cartons, each weighing 6kg each. The cost from Pretoria to Tzaneen was just about R350,00. We thought great, that saves our director a few trips per year (he likes to see his clients when delivering orders and ensuring they are happy with the products), and it will be cost-efficient. The second one, well, let's just say the same cartons, just an extra one added, (i.e. 3 cartons), the same location, cost R 1 750,00. Yes, for three cartons, the same weight and size as previously, the extra carton was an additional R1 400,00.

R 1 400,00. We're looking at almost R50,00 per kilogram. That's what they're charging. And when I contacted them to ask them why in the world did it cost that much, firstly, they barely ever respond back, and secondly, when I did finally get a reply, I got the same impersonal response: "The waybill was charged according to the dimensions and weight, and our rates as such." Then they gave me the excuse that it was an outlying area, and the charge was R 930,00 (excl. VAT). We could have done the trip ourselves there and back and it would have been half the amount that we were charged. Now, when you ask to speak with the manager, they send you from one consultant to another. And when I finally did get a hold of the manager, well elt me tell you any professionalism she may have possessed did not exist between our conversation. She never provided me her name, even when I asked for it (what a shocker, considering how she spoke to me) when I asked why was there such a huge difference between this waybill and the countless others that we have had, she proceeded to notify me that "we have been scoring" since her team has been incorrectly measuring our parcels and the volumetric weight has been incorrect. This is probably for almost 30 waybills.

What she basically told me was that their company was not only ***********, and unprofessional, but also how dare you to say a company has "scored" on the basis of your mistakes? What they have done was given us the wrong idea of what their rates were like and it's just plain dishonest. Then she had the audacity to tell me she can send someone out to explain how the rates work so I have no misconceptions in the future. As if I would ever use their company again, but also to insinuate that I was the problem, and was simply put dumb?

So, to any companies looking into adding a courier company to their ****nal, the Courier Guy is not it. They are quite frankly dishonest, with no moral issues in not being transparent and clearly do not know how to operate as a functional business.