Tag Archives: WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Award

Red Bull Sweet Service and Seekers Travel Sour Service Awards!

December 14, 2012

The Sweet Service Award goes to Red Bull and its entertaining Flugtag it hosted in the V&A Waterfront last Sunday, the first since its last South African event ten years ago. A record count of over 200000 attendees led to traffic congestion and a shortage of parking in the V&A, which meant that visitors had to park at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. From Twitter it was evident to see that everyone had a super time, despite the traffic problems in getting there. One hopes that the City of Cape Town takes a leaf out of Red Bull’s book in how to organise a successful mega event!

The Sour Service Award goes to Tourvest-owned Seekers Travel and its Public Sector Division, in cancelling a booking for our long-standing Department of Environmental Affairs clients. We had received the booking from the friendly Nangamso Nyonkana, but a personal crisis led her to leave the office and hand over the booking to her rude colleague Nomhle Khosi. Despite having met all the onerous invoicing requirements, we were told that the travel agency only pays on the day of guest arrival, and that the payment run for the whole company only starts at 14h30, by which time the guests may have checked in already. When we asked Nomhle to help us to chase the payment in the system, she refused, and cancelled the booking instead, without explanation. The Operations Manager Shelley refused to intervene. Guest Houses are loath to deal with travel agents, and late payment is one of the major irritations, Seekers being a large company and works according to rules, despite the inconvenience to their clients and suppliers! The Department client Eugene Swart was shocked to hear about Seeker’s unprofessional conduct, and will take the matter further!

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.

Melissa’s Sweet Service and Pick ‘n Pay Franschhoek Sour Service Awards!

August 24, 2012

The Sweet Service Award goes to Melissa’s Head Office, which showed its appreciation for ‘constructive criticism and feedback such as yours is seen as a very valuable tool in our endeavours to achieve and maintain the highest possible standards’. They acknowledged that the service problems experienced at their Kloof Street branch on the day that they opened their new branch in the Somerset Mall are ‘not of the standard that you should expect’, sending a voucher with an invitation to return for the ‘true Melissa’s experience‘. While the letter probably is a standard customer response one, Esti Pienaar, Systems Manager, expressed genuine interest in the service deficiency when she called.

The Sour Service Award goes to Pick ‘n Pay Franschhoek, for getting the purchase of gift vouchers so badly wrong. Wanting to save time due to the slow process in loading each voucher individually, we called ahead, and the manager Craig was willing to prepare the 20 gift cards for us. Adding shopping to the voucher purchase, the cashier got herself completely confused, despite the manager standing next to her, and despite confirming a number of times which amount had to be paid, she made an error about the amount due. Adding insult to injury was that none of the cards worked when our staff used them at other Pick ‘n Pay branches. This meant that the whole transaction had to be redone a week later. The worst part was the rudeness of the store manager Stuart Downie, in trying to blame the empty gift cards on ourselves, instead of apologising for the error made by his cashier and her manager!

Shoprite/Checkers Sweet Service and Pick ‘n Pay BP Express Sour Service Awards

May 11, 2012

The Sweet Service Award goes to Shoprite/Checkers, for refunding all its customers for Velvet Sky airline tickets, bought via Computicket Travel, or at a Shoprite or a Checkers store. The airline has been grounded, and has not made arrangements to refund its customers’ tickets. ‘Despite having no legal obligation to refund Velvet Sky’s fares, we feel strongly that you shouldn’t lose your hard-earned money due to this unfortunate event’, said a letter from CEO Whitey Basson, in a newspaper advertisement.

The Sour Service Award goes to the Pick ‘n Pay BP Express in Green Point. Recently the monthly municipal accounts were paid via EasyPay at this branch and sms bundles were bought for the staff. When the sms vouchers and proof of payment were printed by the cashier one could barely read the detail, as the shop printer cartridge was close to empty. The Manager Darren didn’t want to call the franchisee Paul Schaefer (he is never there in the evenings nor over weekends), so he tried to dismantle the printer linked to the till and swop it with another. He called when it was done, an hour later, so that we could fetch the newly printed and far more legible slips. We had not noticed that the sms bundle vouchers did not have a pin code due to the reprint, and this necessitated a third visit to the branch on a Saturday morning, again finding Mr Schaefer absent. I was asked to return two days later, which was unacceptable, due to the time already wasted over three visits. Mr Schaefer called, explaining that he would have to look through the screen shots of the till screens of the two previous visits, to get the sms bundle voucher pin numbers, and this could only be done on his return. We called Jacques Lombard at the Pick ‘n Pay Head Office, and he immediately instructed Mr Schaefer to issue replacement sms bundle vouchers, which was done, but was accompanied by abusive calls and sms messages from Mr Schaefer, absolving himself and his staff from any responsibility for the problem created. We will not return to this Pick ‘n Pay branch, due to the continued EasyPay incompetence experienced in the past year.

Pick ‘n Pay Sweet and Societi Bistro/Food24 Sour Service Awards

April 6, 2012

The Sweet Service Award goes to Pick ‘n Pay, for its use of Twitter to communicate with and provide a service to its customers. While not always able to resolve issues satisfactorily, the recent withdrawal of its Greek yoghurt due its packaging not meeting the new pack labelling legislation taking longer than predicted by the stores, led to us asking via Twitter when it would be re-introduced. We were asked to e-mail the head office with the name of the closest Pick ‘n Pay branch. Two days later a manager of the Camps Bay branch called to say that the yoghurt had arrived, and that he would keep us some for collection.

The Sour Service Award goes to Societi Bistro and Food24, and was nominated by Butch Rice: “I have a very definite snarl at Food24 and Stefan Marais of Societi Bistro. I posted a negative review on Food24, got a phone call from Stefan, and had what I thought was a constructive chat. Until I saw his response on Food24 in which he lied blatantly, claiming I had expressed a preference for frozen chips, which I do not have, and which was never discussed. He also claimed his manager had approached every table during the evening to ensure people were happy. This after I told him that the major problem he had was that nobody had checked with us about what we thought of the meal or anything else. I also see that Food24 gave him a lot more space for his response than usually allowed. It does not do him or Food24 any credit. He had no need to lie, other than to make it appear that his restaurant was beyond reproach in any way. Most disappointing. A postscript to this affair. I tweeted Stefan pointing out that I had never expressed a preference for frozen chips. He replied that I had said I preferred the chips at another restaurant, and that he knew they used frozen chips, hence his conclusion. I have pointed out to him that I had only referred to the other restaurant as an example of thicker sauces, not their chips. I have also attempted to comment on the story on Food24, twice, but they have not used my reply. I wonder why?”