Citi Sprint Courier review

I just had to write something after so many years of using these guys (and gals). It's not that we send many parcels it's just that occasionally there's one that requires essential timing and its just my understanding that the purpose of a courier is to get things there quick. Anyhow, in November we had a tender to get to Pretoria (which happens less than half a dozen times a year) and we had confirmed with Citi Sprint a week before sending it, that they would have sufficient time to get it into the tender box by 11am (it only really needs to get there by noon). As usual they confirmed and collected the tender docs the day before at 3pm. Unfortunately we received a call from them the following morning at 10:30am saying that they would not get it there in time. Their lame excuse was that the planes were full and would not take their bag. Our tenders usually requires over 60 person hours (this was no exception), so they're now fired! I can no longer recommend Citi Sprint (http://www.citisprint.co.za).

That said, who can I recommend, I'm not sure... The Post Office "Speed Services" has always been excellent for me and I'm not a fan of Post Net (mainly because they have forced me - as a recipient - to collect from some obscure location, and it was at a price premium). I'm sure that one of the other global players may work, but I'm not interested in dealing with underqualified call centre operators so we've chosen another small company, Internet Express. The sales person on duty, Janine Naude, gave me a full run down of how the industry works. Looks like that there was little that Citi Sprint could do at the time, other than be in better communication. Nevertheless, I'm confident that we're onto someone that will be watching carefully for our interests. All we really need is to get Government departments to adhere to the ECT Act and allow us to send tender responses by email (and thus not discriminating against us geographically disadvantaged small businesses).