The Sweet Service Award goes to Incredible Connection in the Cape Town city centre, and its salesperson Fabien, who was very helpful in selling a new Acer mini-laptop, and cleaning it proactively to remove all finger marks on it, as I had told him that the laptop was a present for our colleague Carole Cessano, Manager of our Whale Cottage Hermanus.  He made a plan to get a blue coloured laptop, to match our Whale Cottage corporate colour. The present was a huge joy to Carole, her first laptop, allowing her to easily transport her new computer between her home and our guest house.

The Sour Service Award goes to Multichoice, for its abominable call centre service. A recent requirement to upgrade one’s smart card created a problem for our Hermanus guest house, as physical collection of the card from their Cape Town service centre would have left the guest house without the Multichoice channels until a next visit.  I was advised to get my staff to collect the smart card from Neil du Toit General Dealer, the Hermanus agents for Multichoice.  One would have thought that some communication would have taken place between Multichoice and the retailer, to send the signal once the Premier Smart Card had been collected, but this clearly was asking too much.  We called Multichoice, explaining the background, and asking them to send the appropriate signal for the new card, speaking to Nellie and then her supervisor Harriet.  We Tweeted about the poor service received, and the @DSTV Tweeter asked for an explanation of the problem – in 140 characters this was impossible, so we provided our telephone number for them to call.  It took at least an hour for Katleto Motingwa to call back.  He must have looked up the call report from the night before first, as he was exceedingly defensive and rude from the start, and seemed to know all about my query before giving me a chance to explain what I needed. He told me that he was in the Complaints department, but he had no understanding of what I was requesting.  I asked him to get his manager to call, which he did, and unfortunately I did not take his name.  This gentleman was fantastic, understood my simple request immediately, had the new signal sent, and followed up telephonically thereafter to check if all was in order, although he called a few hours later instead of the promised ten minutes.  The Multichoice staff are arrogant and rude. One wonders why Multichoice employs technically unqualified persons in its call centre!

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.