The Sweet Service Award goes to Mercedes Assist Stellenbosch, and its representative Robert, who came to the rescue to help remove a tyre with a puncture, picked up at Plaisir de Merle’s parking area over Franschhoek Uncorked last weekend. The tyre casing had got rusted and couldn’t be removed due to all the rain, despite telephonic instructions on how to do this provided by a mechanic initially. Robert had to attend to another problem in Franschhoek, and changed the tyre after managing to get it off the car with extreme difficulty.  He took pity on our Maintenance Plan having expired, and did not charge.

The Sour Service Award goes to Google South Africa, for its poor organisation of a workshop mainly focused on selling delegates the benefits of Adwords, and also encouraging the usage of Google+ (for an hour), on a wet and rainy Friday, from 2 – 6 pm! The problems started with the lack of parking, due to a Security conference running in the Cape Town International Convention Centre too, which meant that no one was allowed to park in the basement, despite the stormy weather. There was no signage inside the building about the workshop, and no one knew where we had to go.  The workshop started 45 minutes late to allow for the parking problems, and there was no wifi in the auditorium, despite delegates having been told to bring their laptops to set up their Adword accounts.  The MC was flippant and unprofessional, and one of the presenters Ben, who had arrived from Google Dublin, shared his horror story of getting to South Africa, missing a flight and his luggage still not having caught up with him a few days later!  We were then sent to two smaller venues, trekking through half the building, and while there was wifi there, the internet was too slow to allow most to connect (we had already been told to not open/download anything other than Adwords), wasting more time.   Wine and snacks promised for the conclusion of the workshop were nowhere to be seen.  We could not exit the building the normal way, because of the Security conference security procedures, but there was no signage to communicate this.  Attendance was poor, maybe a 100 delegates in a 1000 seat auditorium, reflecting the poor choice of week day and time of day. Presentation slides sent by e-mail were promised to delegates but have not yet been received one week later!

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 info@whalecottage.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.