UAE customers of Fetchr courier service facing delays of up to two weeks for deliveries

The company has blamed the situation on busy Black Friday sales on social media

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, JUNE 10, 2015. Joy Aljouny, Co-Founder of Fetchr. Fetchr's app gives its users the ability to send or receive anything, anywhere, using just their phone’s GPS co-ordinates.  Photographer: Reem Mohammed / The National  *** Local Caption ***  RM_20150610_FETCHR_12.jpg
Powered by automated translation

Dubai courier company Fetchr is being inundated with complaints from customers, some of whom claim their deliveries are up to two weeks late.

Many clients also say they are also unable to reach the company for updates because their phone system is down.

Fetchr has blamed the delays on busy Black Friday sales on social media and told The National delivery times do not exclusively depend on the company.

Some customers said they were worried their orders had gone "missing" in the pre-Christmas rush, which Fetchr said was not the case.

Idriss Al Rifai, the company's chief executive and founder, said: "Packages can be received by Fetchr days or sometimes up to a week after customer purchase on the respective websites. We understand the frustration of end customers who do not receive their packages, but it is sometimes out of our hands.

“As for the telephone lines, we are working on bringing them back up very shortly because we are experiencing technical difficulties.”

Sarah Williams is currently waiting for a delivery that is 10 days late and counting.

“I have been in touch, and apparently they’re all trying to ring me, yet the delivery is never made and my phone never rings,” Ms Williams, 37, from the United States.

Other customers claim their packages are missing.

“Just received an order today that was more than a week late and one of them is missing,” wrote one member of a closed Facebook group.

Many customers are unable to reach the company to complain. Writing on Fetchr’s Twitter feed, one customer wrote about how they were expecting a delivery the previous day, but it did not arrive and they were unable to track their order.

“This is very annoying,” they wrote.

Fetchr initially replied with a standard message saying: "Thank you for contacting Fetchr, have an amazing day. If you need to track your order, you can easily track it using this link: https://track.fetchr.us."

But when the customer replied asking whether they were being serious, adding “your web is not working, your contact centre is not working and for you it’s a joke”, the company followed up with another reply.

“Sorry [customer’s name], but we faced a lot of technical problems last period please accept the apology,” Fetchr wrote in reply.

_______________

Read more:

Fetchr owner has dream of creating new verb

Generation Start-up: Funding was 'petrifying' in the early days, says Fetchr chief

Fetchr launches a faster delivery service

_______________

In another reply, the company wrote: “Hi there, kindly accept our apologies regarding the delay, due to the hot season sale we are facing a lot of inquiries [sic] and we are trying to reply to them all.”

And in a post on a closed Facebook group, another customer said: "I had the same issue with Fetchr last week, couldn't get through on the 'help line' so I sent several follow up requests from the app.

“My client eventually got the delivery after a week. I won’t use them again. Seems like a lot of courier companies were swamped with the Black Friday weekend.”