The Sweet Service Award goes to Sheryl at Charlotte Rhys, who offered to replace seven of their Room Spray bottles at no charge, when I asked to pass on the feedback to the owners of the company that the bottle for this fragrance type falls and breaks easily, being so light in its manufacture as well as its content. Continue reading →
Tag Archives: Table View
Department of Home Affairs Sweet Service and Primi Piatti Sour Service Awards!
The Sweet Service Award goes to the Department of Home Affairs in Barrack Street, which I had to deal with to replace my ID book after my handbag was stolen at the Nap coffee shop in the Cape Quarter in January. I had not been in the building for many years, and was impressed that they supply SARS-style metal seating, which I did not recall, one having to stand in the past. I was fortunate to have decided to go in the afternoon, so that I only had to wait for 90 minutes to have my queue number called. Luckily one has an ID book for a lifetime, and therefore one seldom has to enter the Department’s building a second time! I was impressed with the efficiency of the staff behind the counters, and then noticed how much faster they worked, the closer it got to closing time at 16h00, hearing them mutter that the queue number issuer was still letting in people close to their closing time. I was told that the ID book would take about 8 weeks to arrive, and was more than delighted when I received the sms to collect it after only 3 weeks. I only arrived at 15h00 on a Friday afternoon, and it took only 20 minutes waiting time to collect the ID book! Perhaps this efficiency had to do with the registration for the upcoming General Elections! Continue reading →
MyCiTi Bus losses: will Cape Town ratepayers have to pay?
A hard-hitting Open Letter to Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille and Councillor Brett Herron was published in the Letters page of the Cape Times last week, and echoes many of our observations about the failure of the MyCiTi Bus service on the city centre and Camps Bay routes. The newspaper also published a defensive response from Councillor Brett Herron, Mayoral Committee member for Transport and ultimately responsible for the city’s public transport service.
Emiritus Professor of Forensics at UCT Deon Knobel, a respected pathologist and lecturer, has observed, as have we (we have Tweeted this regularly) that the MyCiTi Buses travelling in Camps Bay and along Kloof Street are still close to empty three months after the inception of the routes. Our blogpost after a trial trip from Camps Bay to the Silo section (previously called the Clocktower) of the V&A Waterfront highlighted that the trip took too long (90 minutes one way), and that commuters who wanted to get onto the bus did not have a MyCiTi Bus card with which to pay for their trip. Extensive queues are still seen in Camps Bay, waiting for taxis, despite the MyCiTi Bus charging next to nothing!
Professor Knobel’s letter documented his observations over the last month in Gardens, Kloof Street, Kloofnek Road, and Camps Bay that not one of the MyCiTi Buses had ‘more than five or six passengers in the bus, and not infrequently no more than three or four. One bus even carried the amazing figure of one passenger’. In addition, he had observe eight ‘virtually empty‘ buses on the N2 highway, returning to the city from the airport. Given the poor occupancy of the MyCiTi Buses, Professor Knobel asked De Lille and Herron the following questions: Continue reading →
New MyCiTi Bus Camps Bay route: whale of a good value, not running smoothly yet!
The MyCiTi Bus finally started operating on Saturday, about eighteen months behind schedule! Given that we want to inform our Whale Cottage Camps Bay guests about the service, my colleague and I went for a test drive of the Camps Bay – Civic Centre – V&A Waterfront Silo route yesterday.
The first step was to obtain our MyCiTi Bus cards, which one needs to load credit on to, for swiping when stepping on the bus. It was announced that one could obtain a free card (a saving of R25) from the Camps Bay Library, where an official from the City of Cape Town sold us R30-loaded cards, the only cards one can purchase at the library this week. These can only be bought for cash, and only one per person can be obtained, ID details being taken. The City representative was uncertain about the other places at which one can load more credit onto the card, saying that Kauai was to be a point to do so, but that its system was off-line yesterday. He thought Pick ‘n Pay Camps Bay would be another point, but he wasn’t sure. There does not appear to be any place to purchase cards once the City’s generous offer of free cards ends on Saturday. One would then have to go the Queen’s Beach station, or to the Civic Centre to buy cards there. Each card comes with a pin, which one can change at a station, and is required to load more credit. There was only one newspaper advertorial on the table, and no leaflets, saying he was waiting for more. When I asked for more information for the guest house, he gave me a pile of the newspaper copies from under the table!
We took the bus from the Whale Rock bus stop opposite Pick ‘n Pay 
Camps Bay just after 14h00, and we were delighted to see the name choice. The bus travelled alongside Victoria Road, up Argyle Road , into Geneva Drive, onto Camps Bay Drive, down Kloofnek Road (this seems to be a very dangerous stop, as we observed a tourist family getting on the bus, which had been to Table Mountain and must have crossed the very busy road without a pedestrian crossing to get the bus stop), connecting into Kloof Street (very long Continue reading →