SA Relocations review: Insurance claim on shipment to australia

SA Relocations…… No Customer Service and totally pathetic, excuse after excuse, lack of communication, Companies like this should not be allowed to trade in this Industry……

In October 2021 SA Relocations packed up our home perfectly and stored our furniture in their Warehouse in Centurion Pretoria till June 2022. Our initial costs being close to R115 000,00 for our own 40ft container. Imagine our surprise when we got a mail saying we had to pay another R57021.00 a whopper of 73% increase! before they would release our container to be shipped to Brisbane Australia. So basically, if we didn’t pay this extra cost we would not receive our container. They were by no means the cheapest in their pricing either.

Our furniture was supposed to all be delivered on the 27 September 2022 but only half of our container arrived and the first round we were about 99 items missing. Immediately we phoned their delivery Agent Jactin of Star International in Sydney and reported it to him and to their Lady here in Brisbane by the name of Paye who was extremely rude and put the phone down on us. (She was supposedly in charge of the deliveries etc. at Brisbane Port) and immediately to SA Relocations in Centurion and requested a claim form. And before they would deliver our container to our home, we had to pay this Star International another $663 to pay before releasing the container to us.

The balance of our container arrived on 29th September 2022. At the same time, we contacted Steven Goulding who was the Sales person who actually came to our home and did the whole contract with us and advised that he would see us through from start till our container arrived in Brisbane. We contacted him immediately telephonically advising him we were unhappy that our container delivery had been split/shared as we had paid fully for our own container, and we followed up with an email & sms to him confirming how unhappy we were with the bad state of furniture, breakages, damages, missing items and boxes arriving here half-filled presumably our boxes were repacked somewhere along the line! Our biggest item missing was our 1.4m x 1.2 meter solid wooden 12-Seater dining room table. How do you lose such a big item? Our wooden patio furniture was laying in water and the brown packaging stuck to the feet of the couches and the backs full of mildew from water! Unbelievable damage. my question to SA Relocations was this while in storage in Centurion when they had floods in March/April of 2022? breakages, damages, missing items and then Stephen told me there was nothing he could do for us, it was out of his hands, and we must speak to Bianca the Shipping Manager in Cape Town or Laura in the Claims Dept Cape Town.

We also referred this to Tony Stephen’s superior who said he would try escalating but could do nothing further for us. And so, our nightmare began with trying to get our claim sorted and we are now 9 months down the line!

If we didn’t pay, they wouldn’t ship our container! But then, we had to hear from them when querying our missing items that they actually without our knowledge or permission, had made ours a shared container! Which is totally unacceptable?

So basically, we immediately on both dates advised that our dining room table was missing….. a 12-seater 2.4 x 1.2 missing! Jactin from Star International told us that they were short staffed in their Warehouse in Brisbane and only had 3 staff helping and one staff member to work forklift and they have over 300 containers in warehouse to search through! So, we got no help from him either. We offered to come help search and asked for a video of the container being unpacked but were granted neither. Did our dining room table even leave South Africa? No one answers our questions total silence from SA Relocations

Till today no one has come back to us regarding the whereabout of our table & all the rest of the missing & damaged & broken items, other than they been looking in the warehouse! No one takes our calls, and no one gives us answers and we have asked for their CEO’s contact details which no one will give to us! This has been on gong since 29 September 2022 their Delivery Agent here in Sydney who had advised us per mail on 18th October 2022 that he had advised SA Relocations to continue with the claim. We put our claim in on the 4 October 2022 as we were told that it had to be in within 7 days of delivery.

Every week we email requesting a report on the status of our claim and every week we get this feeble excuse that they are still awaiting documentation from their Delivery Agent! We have asked them time and time again for their CEO’s no and they all refuse to give this information and keep referring us back to “the CEO’s PA” Laura who is the one making all the excuses for their incompetency and keeps saying she is awaiting a document from Bianca who had forgotten to follow up with Sydney for the POD as they required this for our claim.

It was only now on 11th April 2024 that Jactin advised Bianca & Laura again that he had sent the POD to them multiple times the first being 18th October 2022 (he advised us then as well)

17th April 2023 Laura advised us she had finished working on our claim and sent it to her Supervisor. I follow up weekly, but they just don’t get back to us or we have got these messages : /they not in office/on leave/awaiting supervisor/awaiting outstanding documents/Supervisor needs new documents etc. who we have asked for her details NOTHING. We asked on the 14 January 2023 if they had all documents and did they need more from us.

No one has got back to us regarding items that are broken, damaged etc as to what we must do. We have had to go out and, in the meantime, replace our dining room table and various important items that were damaged at our own cost! And the costs are increasing daily while they delay this claim.

We are now 9 months into reporting our claim and still nothing from SA Relocations. It seems to us that SA Relocations actually do not have Insurance as most Insurance Companies would never take this long to process any claim or are they hoping everyone just gives up and they have less work to do, less commitment.

The service we have received from SA Relocations has been the worst in this Industry and they have taken no responsibility in help resolve this matter.

Please save yourself stress and not become another victim of SA Relocations