Cape Town-based investment adviser David Melvill offers some hard-learned advice to help if a courier has stolen your items.
My parcel with nine Krugerrands and 20 plastic capsules arrived from my dealer in Johannesburg. I meticulously opened the parcel and unpacked it, only to discover three Krugerrands were missing. I revisited my invoice. Sure enough, nine KRs were stated, and there were only six. That is more than R90,000 gone!
There had been two other delivery hiccups in the past and although they had been adequately resolved, the dealer raised the issue again, as if to ask whether it was worth doing business with me. His response was: “They have tampered with the box.” He, in turn, obtained a video of the parcel being prepared to be loaded into the vehicle for delivery. It was still in the same perfect format as when it had left JHB in the overnight delivery.The waybill was missing. The tape that secured the box, which always has your name and cellphone number on it, was missing. They had used new tape to close up the box. More importantly, the package had been made up again.