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We don't
know about your experiences with NamPost lately but they would
probably make for some interesting reading too. Ours sum up to the
question: Do postal services actually still exist in Namibia ... or
is NamPost too busy making money from charge cards and savings
accounts?
Admittedly we never were the greatest
supporters of NamPost's postal services - after all, we are into
computers, emails and the likes. How consequently we became
non-users is however not by choice but out of sheer necessity ... a
conclusion drawn from frustration and aggravation.
If one
sends a letter by mail, - in case YOU still remember the
hand-written or typed message on a piece of paper that was sealed in an envelope,
which in turn was adorned with a well-designed postage stamp and carried or driven to a
red mail box somewhere 2 to 200 kilometres away -, one expects that
envelope including its content to arrive in someone else's post box,
right? Not that we in Namibia ever got spoilt with delivery speed of
any kind in the past but it was reasonable to assume that postal
services did their job at a rate of about 80km ground coverage per
day. So when a letter was sent for example from Windhoek to Swakopmund, it took
roughly 5 days to reach its destination. It has always remained a
mystery to us though how airmail from Namibia to Europe often
managed to get to the intended recipient within 3 days. On the other
hand, aircrafts do fall out of the sky, if they travel at 80km per
day, don't they...? Anyway, it was comforting to know that there was a
certain consistency in the slowness and mail arrivals.
When things deteriorated to a point where
"snail mail" had become "sub-snail mail", NamPost
came up with a wonderful proposal: Courier services could do
the job of transporting envelopes and parcels to any post
office within Namibia OVERNIGHT, or a maximum of 2 days in case of
greater distances to cover. Town-folks could even enjoy pick-up/drop-off services at their homes
and business locations.
"What an improvement!" we thought and happily jumped at the
boundless business opportunities this giant leap into the 21st
century provided ... at about ten times the price of standard
postage but hey, who cared? Namibia had finally made it and it
worked! (We did mention already that us customers were not spoilt,
didn't we?) This was about 4 years ago, and with
NamPost Couriers enjoying growing popularity amongst those in need
of fast and reliable postal services, things could only get better
... or so we thought.
Our own records of "customer"
experiences during the 18-month period between early 2005 and
mid-2006 alone tell a completely different story:
- All 8 letters air-mailed to us from
Europe during this period never reached us (instead we found at
least 5 wrongly sorted ones in our postal box). Unfortunately, one
of those eagerly expected ones from overseas had contained a small
amount of cash money as a birthday present. Since then, our foreign
mail obviously was "simply irresistible". Repeated attempts to have
a talk with the manager of the post office in charge of our post box
(one of the smaller outlets with a comparatively small number of
post boxes) only resulted in "she is too busy"-replies from staff and unreturned
phone calls so far.
- Telecom invoices reached us occasionally but
seldom enough to request reprints for 3/4 of the year, which we
collected from Telecom in person, i.e. at our expense and time. Since our domestic worker's
Telecom invoices arrived at the very same post box as regularly as
clockwork, the assumption that ours must have been of "special
interest" to someone at NamPost does not sound too far-fetched, or
does it?
- A work sample on CD urgently required by a
client in Cape Town was supposed to be transported by NamPost
Couriers ex Windhoek by air. When we informed the client of N$250.00
to be payable for a 3-day (no-guarantee) air transportation service,
his response was "I did not plan on buying NamPost ... anyway, what
did you mean by 3 or more days? Are there only 2 flights per week to
Cape Town?" "No, Sir, several PER DAY!" "Forget it!"
So we settled for sending a 15 MB data file by email during the same
night, and the envelope containing a single CD by surface mail
through NamPost Couriers the following day, both at OUR expense. The
charge was "only" N$80 for an estimated 7- to 10-day train
transportation - again, no commitment but shrugged shoulders
on NamPost's part concerning the exact transport duration, which sounded more like
open-ended. We never even bothered to ask the client in South Africa
whether our CD did indeed arrive ... and he never mentioned it again
either.
- If you are doing business in Namibia, you
know how fond this nation is of tenders. This translates into good
revenue for courier services, as submitting offers by email or fax is not
permitted, even if the recipient resides at the opposite end of the
country and DOES have such modern communication facilities. (Nope, we do things by the
book, even if it was written 100 years ago!)
In April 2006, we responded to a tender invitation of a potential
client based in Katima Mulilo (in the far north-eastern reaches of
the Caprivi Region - for our non-Namibian readers). As usual, the
deadline for tender submission was tight, and on asking the client
we learned that NamPost Couriers would be our best bet to make
it. So far, so good - we paid our due in tender fees, and since
NamPost Couriers assured us by phone that their vehicle would leave Windhoek
for Katima Mulilo on the required date, the business of transporting
a big envelope containing important documentation was theirs.
BIG MISTAKE, as things started going terribly from here on:
For starters, the envelope was not collected from our offices as
agreed but only the following morning, after a 16-hour delay and
several phone calls to the courier services. We were however assured
that the envelope would still leave Windhoek on the same day, which
was a Friday and meant a weekend getting in the way of a timely
delivery. Another long-distance phone call at peak-hour charges to
Katima confirmed that "Monday morning would be fine too", as we had
proof of timely posting. When we phoned Katima on Monday around
lunchtime again, still no courier in sight. NamPost Couriers in
Windhoek then "suddenly remembered" that they "don't do weekends",
i.e. our precious tender documents had spent Saturday and Sunday
"somewhere" in Rundu, the half-way station to Katima, and would only
commence their 400km-journey eastwards on Monday - departure time:
unknown. So we agreed with the client who was keen to see our offer
that faxing the 25-page written proposal would be acceptable in the
interim, even though a final decision could only be based on also
receiving the original samples contained in the envelope. Phone calls to Katima on Tuesday and Wednesday - no news;
Thursday, - one week after the mailing date -, still no good news from Katima.
So we sent a fax with proof of docket no. and rather angry comments
to NamPost Couriers ... no response until TODAY (29. August 2006),
not even an apology by phone.
Our
couriered envelope eventually reached its destination after nearly 2
weeks and overall expenses of more than N$400 ... and we kissed our
chance for winning a long-term contract worth several ten thousand
Namibia Dollars good-bye, thanks to NamPost Couriers! Well done,
guys, you have shown us how businesses, if not entire economies are
destroyed!
- Only 3 weeks ago, another client with his
home base one-and-a-half hour's drive from Outjo, required our urgent assistance
in getting some personal documents processed by the Namibian Police
in Windhoek and returned to him within 3 days. So he drove to the
NamPost office in Outjo and sent his standard-sized envelope through
NamPost Couriers, which arrived within 48 hours (not 24, as would be expected
with less than 400km to cover and after paying N$17.00). Due to the
courier's delay, we had to chase NamPol and they indeed "made a
plan", and within another 24 hours, the papers were on their way
back to Outjo ... we can only guess that they, the documents, visited
some of the NamPost driver's friends and families in Okahandja and
Otjiwarongo, if not in the Okakarara or Oshakati areas, and perhaps
they even got to enjoy some game viewing in Etosha because some
other relative working at one of the Rest Camps in the park was urgently waiting for a love
letter from his girlfriend, transported from Windhoek and
hand-delivered to him free of charge.
We simply don't know, which adventures the envelope had to face and
how many hardships it had to endure on its 10-day journey back to
the Outjo post office but we were overflowing with gratitude towards
NamPost Couriers when it was eventually discovered, - we still can
hardly believe our luck -, in the CORRECT postal box! Well done
again, guys, you hit the target and should really not be bothered
how you did it ... uppsss, sorry, we forgot that you don't do that
anyway.
The attentive reader will have concluded correctly by
now that NamPost Couriers is in fact only NamPost's way of generating far
more income from "snail mail" services - NOT from services that even
remotely resemble those of couriers. "Normal"
mail services provided, if one is so lucky, at basic rates are only
still used by the poorest citizens (those few who haven't yet found
a cheaper AND far more reliable private solution) and by those who
don't mind the "sub-snail"-pace; the remainder of Namibians is paying
the much higher courier fees in the hope that their mail will be
transported at least within the period of time that "normal" mail
used to take to reach its destination. Clever scheme, neh?!
Hence our question whether standard public postal
SERVICES actually still do exist in this country or whether we are
just expected to be content with what NamPost throws at us?
In case the latter applies, and someone in the higher echelons of
NamPost accidentally reads this:
We hope you realise that your treatment of the Namibian public is as
"ironic" as the style in which this page was written! Or are you
indeed too busy thinking up new ways of how to rob Namibians blind?
As far as we are concerned, dear NamPost,
please look at us as your EX-customers, as we will leave no stone
unturned to convince our families, friends, business associates,
services suppliers, and everyone else, - those who
communicate with us or promote their services to us in writing as
much as those expecting payments from us or having to pay us -, to
make use of Email and Internet facilities to the greatest possible
extent, if not exclusively. We foresee a time in the not so distant
future when we will not even need your post box anymore!
And guess what? We are pretty sure that a growing number of fellow
Namibians will join us in the countdown to the rise of a new era in Namibia's postal services - services that
deserve to be called as such, that we can be proud of, and that we
will be proudly supporting. Proudly Namibian - remember ...?!
Yours truly,
WebITNamibia-Team return to top
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