{"id":20660,"date":"2011-05-20T10:07:09","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T08:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=20660"},"modified":"2011-05-20T10:07:09","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T08:07:09","slug":"franschhoek-literary-festival-sweet-and-adt-sour-service-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/franschhoek\/franschhoek-literary-festival-sweet-and-adt-sour-service-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Franschhoek Literary Festival Sweet and ADT Sour Service Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sweet Service Award<\/strong>\u00a0 goes to Jenny Hobbs and Sheenagh Tyler, tireless organisers of the Franschhoek Literary Festival, for a fantastic 5th Festival, and for filling the beds and restaurants of Franschhoek over this stimulating weekend.\u00a0 More than 7000 tickets were sold for 70 programme sessions, up by 50 % compared to 2010. \u00a0It is the first time in\u00a0many months\u00a0that the village has been buzzing, and that most establishments\u00a0were fully booked.\u00a0 It also created a wonderful interaction between Festival goers, who enjoyed chatting to complete strangers, sharing their passion for reading books and writing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Sour Service Award<\/strong>\u00a0 goes to ADT, for suspending its service to Whale Cottage Franschhoek due to an account that was not paid according to their records, even though our records showed that we had, thereby leaving the guest house unarmed for 24 hours until we got to Franschhoek for the Literary Festival.\u00a0\u00a0We subscribe to their service in Plettenberg Bay too, and this may have caused the confusion, especially as the company now runs its administrative\u00a0operation from Cape Town, and does not state which regional service it is communicating about or sending invoices for.\u00a0 The suspension was communicated by empty sms, to which we reacted by call.\u00a0 SMS’s sent in reply are ignored and not reacted to.\u00a0 The ADT Paarl manager Emile Weaver was able to expedite the re-connection as soon as they had received our cheque.\u00a0 One would have expected a manager to have called proactively, to prevent the suspension in the first instance.\u00a0 ADT has a near-monopoly in Franschhoek, there being no security company alternative.\u00a0ADT appears to be run by the accounts department.<\/p>\n

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards<\/strong>\u00a0are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.\u00a0 Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at <\/span>info@whalecottage.com<\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales <\/span><\/strong>newsletters on the <\/span>www.whalecottage.com<\/span><\/a> website.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sweet Service Award\u00a0 goes to Jenny Hobbs and Sheenagh Tyler, tireless organisers of the Franschhoek Literary Festival, for a fantastic 5th Festival, and for filling the beds and restaurants of Franschhoek over this stimulating weekend.\u00a0 More than 7000 tickets were sold for 70 programme sessions, up by 50 % compared to 2010. \u00a0It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[124,14,248,21,293],"tags":[1770,32366,32378,11531,4533,32369,927,4586,32390,13,4702,952,32373,2354],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t