The Sweet Service Award goes to Rocksole Shoes & Repairs in Wale Street in Bo-Kaap, for their make-good in repairing the zip of my handbag. I had handed the bag in just before they closed for a Christmas/New Year break, and was promised the bag back on their last working day. They were clearly under pressure, and the bag’s zip broke immediately when I used it. The owner apologised for the shoddy work of his staff, and invited me to bring back the handbag, for the zip to be repaired again. He did the repair in a speedy two days, and did not charge for it. Ironically and sadly the handbag was stolen at Nap coffee shop in the Cape Quarter two days later!
The Sour Service Award goes to AIMWEB, an ‘online marketing company’ its sales caller said, trying to sell the services of a website telephonically. She tried to soft-soak me by calling me ‘honey’ and ‘darling’, which had exactly the opposite effect. She could not commit to costs, as her Marketing Manager would have to come and see me first, evaluate the competition, and work out the number of key words. He would then create a ‘tailor made package’. I was so annoyed that I called the Parklands-based company (Tel 021 557-1807), and asked to speak to the head of the sales department. Russian CEO Yuri Shatalov refused to give me his surname initially, and sounded very reticent to talk to me, despite heading up the Sales department. There is no reference to AIMWEB when one Googles it, which is ironic. What makes it a further problem is that the name of the company sounds like ‘MWeb’ when they call.
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at whalecot@iafrica.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.
Chris von Ulmenstein. Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
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Chris, I have had shoes repaired at Rocksole after being recommended there by one of my staff. They are amazing, I cannot praise their service and workmanship enough.
Thank you for sharing Johan.
It’s a joy to see such good artisanal service.
The following emailed request arrived yesterday, five years after posting this post!
‘Dear Chris,
I am writing to you as I have found the following article from 2014:
http://www.chrisvonulmenstein.com/blog/cape-town/rocksole-shoes-repairs-sweet-and-aimweb-sour-service-awards/
I would like to kindly request you to remove this post about AIMWEB as I feel it is not reflective of our company nature and what we stand for.
I do apologise on behalf of our staff member in 2014 who used inappropriate terms over the phone. I assure you that this has been resolved internally many years ago and we have been instructing our sales staff very strictly since to adhere to the script and not be ‘creative’.
We have been providing our clients with quality services for many years, and I assure you that we are a reputable company and have very good reviews and testimonials as well as many word of mouth referrals from our clients monthly.
Thank you for your consideration.
Kind Regards,
Yuri Shatalov
{MS.IT; NDip.Eng}
Project Manager
0861 AIMWEB (0861 246 932)’