A United States-based retailer has informed MyBroadband that it has stopped shipments to South Africa, because most of the packages sent to local buyers have gone missing.

The retailer, who did not want to be named, said the latest incident was when a product he shipped to South Africa on 16 February 2015 arrived back at his office in December.

“We are taking South Africa off our ship-to list, because nearly no products shipped there in 2015 made it to people,” he said.

“Nearly every customer who purchased from [South Africa] has never received [their product]. So we had to remove [SA] from our list, unfortunately.”

Many international retailers are already not shipping to South Africa, which does not bode well for new Post Office CEO Mark Barnes.

Barnes said that getting e-commerce players to use the Post Office is one of his key objectives, and a potential growth area for the company.

However, he will have to work hard to gain the trust of e-commerce shops, who have been let down by the Post Office in the past.

The Post Office was asked for comment regarding the lost and returned packages, but did not respond by the time of publication.

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