Last week I posted about Amazon’s decision to no longer post parcels to South Africa. I drew no conclusions and made no suggestions or insinuations. Just asked questions and promised to follow up, with sprinklings of speculation, largely outlining my doubt that the SAPO is solely to blame for the decision by Amazon. If the comments attached to my previous post are anything to go by then it seems there is now a perception out there that my intention was to father a conspiracy theory. This is not true. I have fathered two human children and my fair share of nonsense – but no conspiracy theories involving WantItAll. So here’s the deal…

Amazon does still post to South Africa. Just not from Amazon.com – the American version of the store. The British Amazon.co.uk will still use normal post to deliver packages to South Africa, however (click on the image for proof of this).

So if mail theft at the South African Post Office is the real reason for the decision by Amazon, then why is it still offering postal services to the country from the UK? Eh?

Having spoken to two local online retailers who deal with Amazon on a daily basis, Simon from Have2Have and Justin from WantItAll on the latest episode of ZA Tech Show, I have realised that while the South African Post Office really is more reliable now than ever before it is still a dodgy system to use for the likes of sending iPods and high-end cameras. Those will be stolen, if they aren’t broken. Not that anyone with half a brain would consider posting an iPod in South Africa via conventional channels. Or anywhere in the world for that matter.

This is why god made priority post and couriers. I asked my friend Steve in the UK if he would send an iPod to Liverpool using the British postal system and his retort was, “What?!? Are you $#&%ing mental?”

Steve is a real Brit. Not some kid who moved over to the UK because he planned to make millions as a street sweeper and now refuses to come home.

While the SAPO (South African Post Office) is pretty reliable in general, it is not consistent in its delivery times. This was affirmed by both Simon and Justin, who both say that Amazon deliveries have probably suffered many delays, precipitating the sending out of follow-up packages. The perception was that mail was lost, when really it was just late.

Justin from WantItAll also has an interesting theory concerning fraud. He says that some people in South Africa probably receive their packages from Amazon and then lie about them being lost, abusing Amazon’s policy to replace lost items. While this theory sounds plausible I find it hard to believe that this would happen more in South Africa than anywhere else in the world. There is also no evidence to back it up.

I don’t doubt for a second that the South African Post Office is not the most reliable in the world. I just haven’t had any problems myself and can’t find anyone who has had the likes of books and DVDs go missing. I also have no reason to doubt the organisation’s claims of a 99 percent success rate at recovering stolen parcels thanks to its new camera system at depots.

I’ll say it again: the SAPO used to be useless, thieving and unreliable. It simply isn’t any more. And the only people who say otherwise are ex-pats, who I have problems seeing eye to eye with on the state of institutions in our country at the best of times. Many, not all, left because they were negative about the state of the country – and now use any excuse to throw poo at South African service providers in an attempt to justify to themselves and the world that leaving was the right decision.

Amazon.com has not been available for comment. But the fact that the British version of the store still posts to South Africa is an interesting angle because there are huge differences in mailing things to and from the USA as opposed to the UK, in my experience. Packages I receive from the UK take between four days and two weeks to arrive, for me. But packages from the USA take at least two weeks, sometimes longer.

So my take on this for the time being is as follows; Amazon.com has had trouble maintaining its usually high-level of service to South Africa for the same reasons most other international companies do – we are far away from the developed world. Getting things to and from South Africa from places as far afield as the USA is challenging and processes are unreliable. The reason this isn’t the case in the rest of Africa is simply because no other country on the continent offers anywhere near the amount of business to Amazon as South Africa does.

I think the real reason Amazon.com doesn’t want to ship to South Africa is because it would prefer to divert all business to the region via its UK presence. And yes, that has something to do with “lost” mail, but not everything.

South Africans are prone to negativity. It’s not our fault – we have had a rough ride over the last year and a history of atrocious service in the country. So it’s easy to convince an already pessimistic population that our service providers are shite. Telkom, our banks and most other organisations still have a long way to go in terms of delivery and offering a level of service anywhere near what can be expected from first-world companies. But the Post Office is different. I urge you to look at the facts before making up your mind – and stop pissing and moaning about South Africa unless you have proposed solutions. Nothing ever gets fixed by whiners.