THE SA Post Office has apologised for the late delivery of a Christmas card, which took 15 months to arrive in the post box of an Umbilo family.
According to Penny Lombaard, she received a Christmas card from her husband’s family on 27 March, which she thought was strange, as Christmas had come and gone, until she saw the date the card had been posted!
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“When I first saw the envelope in my post box, I thought it was a card for Easter, but people don’t usually send cards anymore. My husband, Leon’s Jewish family always send cards, but you don’t expect a card in March anyway,” she said.
Penny said Leon had thought it had been a card from Christmas last year, until they saw the date on the envelope. “We were horrified! The card had been posted on 14 December 2015 at Menlyn Park in Pretoria,” said Penny.
She said from there the card had sat at the post office, as the next date stamp was at the main post office in Pretoria on 14 March 2017.
“It went via Richards Bay before arriving in our post box on 27 March! It wasn’t under stamped as we would have then had to collect it, but you can see it has been paid for. I can now understand why people don’t post things anymore, if it can take a card 15 months to arrive at its destination!” she said.
In response to queries by Berea Mail, the SA Post Office said: “At the SA Post Office, we continuously check our delivery standards and over the past year, we have seen a gradual improvement. We test the delivery of mail items across cities, in the same province and between provinces.”
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“This means that the Christmas card your reader received so late is an exception. We apologise for the incident and our operational management will take up the issue to ensure that this delay remains an exception. We appreciate the fact that you enquired about this incident. It will certainly help us to find out what went wrong and make sure it does not happen again.”
