Avoid UPS at all costs!!

Avoid UPS South Africa where possible (that means as soon as a package arrives at the UPS RSA depot). Their incompetence is astounding. Not like what you'd receive from UPS in Europe or North America etc. I had to go through a ridiculous process of obtaining certain ITAC (International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa) import permits for a couple of the products in my package from Europe. Firstly, they only disclosed one of the products that needed a permit, not both, until much later (already over a month wasted being held at UPS). At one stage, claiming customs rejected the 2nd permit (which is basically impossible... ). By the time everything had been cleared and sorted, UPS gets back to me that they can no longer retrieve the package as it has been moved to the "state warehouse" (just gone beyond the 3months package hold threshold), of which you'd have to apply separately through customs and pay more for it. No guarantee they'd even accept. The only reason this happened is because of their serious incompetence and clear "playing around" with the customer (me) which lead to massive amounts of time wasted, which could've been avoided from the get-go! Their communication is so poor, including between employees within their company. ITAC were fine by the way. They were never an issue (import permits approved and supp**** to me within around 5-7 business days). As an expat working in South Africa, a lot of things don't exactly surprise me about this country, but my goodness, the patheticness of some companies still to this day astounds me. You generally would never see such **** from UPS within the first-world... I've had a better overall experience with DHL, even if international companies find them a bit more expensive. They tend to work better in South Africa than UPS. You might also have better luck with FedEx too. Do not use UPS!! The "playing around" with the customer part almost borders on ******** activity.