Building a competitor to the Post Office

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Jamie McKane

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Building a competitor to the Post Office

Working in ecommerce in South Africa, one of the first comments Lars Veul heard was “whatever you do, never use the Post Office”.

This stuck with him, and it was the driving force behind his decision to start smart logistics company Pargo with his business partner Derk Hoekert.
 
[QUOTE="Unfortunately we're never going to get away from sapo for international parcels :/[/QUOTE]

Good heavens - I did not know that. That sounds like an archaic law from the apartheid days. One would guess that it shouldn't be too hard to challenge unfair laws like that in court.
 
Much of the courier services available to the ordinary small guy that might require a parcel sent or needs to receive one is at the mercy of the best of the rest. Parcel sent via Aramex Shop and Drop on Thursday last week. "Next day delivery before 12 in major cities"? Sure, eventually had to phone up yesterday afternoon at 14h00 and cause a stink as I still needed it yesterday afternoon and the initial response was "It will be there before 16h00".
 
Swa said:
This is where the focus should be now. Government has failed in its duty so the court should order that private companies can take over.
Click to expand...
will never happen
will make ANC look incompetent
 
A Land Rover I bought a few years after moving to South Africa that got me stuck 75% of the way to Windhoek over a very hot December holiday.
Click to expand...
I have immense sympathy for this person.
 
Swa said:
This is where the focus should be now. Government has failed in its duty so the court should order that private companies can take over.
Click to expand...
Same story as Eskom, SABC, PRASA, Sentech, etc etc - they all have monopoly protection deeply baked into our legislation and unfortunately the fundamental ideology of the tripartite alliance is a tendency toward protecting centralisation rather than setting it free.
 
SkippyRamirez said:
Carrier Pigeons would make SAPO look incompetent.
Click to expand...
Carrier pigeons already humiliated Telkom.
Cape Town - Winston, a homing pigeon, has made history by beating a Telkom ADSL line in delivering 4GB of data from Howick to Hillcrest, outside Durban in just 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds, whereas the ADSL download was "still just under four percent complete" at 11:45.
Click to expand...
https://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Pigeon-beats-Telkom-20090909

Then again, a pigeon with a 1TB microSD card would humiliate most internet connections.
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...1tb-microsd-card-sandisk-micron-price-release
 
Sollie said:
$$$$$$$$$$$

A $1 item becomes a $20 import.
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It's better than your parcel not arriving at all. There is absolutely zero guarantee that your parcel will even arrive, nevermind arrive on time if you use the Post Office to send or receive parcels overseas.
 
deweyzeph said:
It's better than your parcel not arriving at all. There is absolutely zero guarantee that your parcel will even arrive, nevermind arrive on time if you use the Post Office to send or receive parcels overseas.
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I do not disagree, but by the same token paying $20 for a $1 item is not on when you might as well pay $22 for a new item the $1 item is meant to fix, effectively chucking $21 down the drain. Rinse and repeat ...
 
garp said:
Same story as Eskom, SABC, PRASA, Sentech, etc etc - they all have monopoly protection deeply baked into our legislation and unfortunately the fundamental ideology of the tripartite alliance is a tendency toward protecting centralisation rather than setting it free.
Click to expand...
Not so much a tendency, as an absolute requirement in terms of the ANC's constitution. IIRC, the ANC government and Alliance partners need to control all levers of power to ensure that goals of the National Democratic Revolution are met.
 
From the little I have learned, SAPO outgoing is country miles better than incoming to or around ZA. One day I will be brave enough to put this to the test.
 
Pargo is fine and well, but they don't fill the void as far as international shipments go. It's either

1. SAPO, and hope for the best.
2. Postnet, (via Royal Mail) pay a premium and still hope for the best.
3. Courier, and pay a small fortune.

On the receiving side of things, Option 2 can be scratched off that list.

McT said:
From the little I have learned, SAPO outgoing is country miles better than incoming to or around ZA. One day I will be brave enough to put this to the test.
Click to expand...

Spoiler alert! It's not. Your package will arrive at its destination, but not anytime soon after it's sent.
 
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