{"id":25875,"date":"2011-12-30T10:41:07","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T08:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=25875"},"modified":"2011-12-30T10:48:26","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T08:48:26","slug":"telkom-sweet-service-and-overstrand-municipality-sour-service-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/telkom-sweet-service-and-overstrand-municipality-sour-service-award\/","title":{"rendered":"TELKOM Sweet Service and Overstrand Municipality Sour Service Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sweet Service Award<\/strong> goes to Gerry of the St George’s Mall branch of TELKOM, who helped me rectify a problem with the paid-for itemised billing on the telephone account not showing cell phone calls made, the most costly calls made on any business line. \u00a0The telephone account had an (unrequested) National-call only setting, instead of an All-call setting! \u00a0 Gerry printed out the whole account again, and fixed the incorrect setting. \u00a0This is the second time that he has been helpful in sorting out a billing query, and in general the friendliness at this Customer Service branch far exceeds that offered by the Sea Point branch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Sour Service Award<\/strong> goes to the Overstrand Municipality. \u00a0Invoices for water, electricity, and rates and taxes in Hermanus are issued as late as the 28th of the month, meaning that one only receives them in Cape Town around the 10th. \u00a0Payment is expected by the 20th, and a R300 penalty per invoice is levied whenever this payment date is not met. \u00a0This means two trips to Pick ‘n Pay per month, to pay via their Easy Pay facility, as the other account payments cannot wait so long. \u00a0None of the other three municipalities that we deal with are so late with their invoices and so punitive with their penalty charges. I called the Overstrand Municipality, requesting an earlier invoice date, but this cannot be done, as all invoices are issued on the same date! \u00a0This is the e-mailed response I received to my call, from Elsabe Liebenberg, the Senior Accountant of the Overstrand Municipality: “Overstrand Municipality Customer Care, Credit Control and Debt Collection Policy stated the following: <\/span><\/em>6.4.5 (a) Accounts are delivered monthly.\u00a0 It is the customers responsibility to enquire from the Municipality should an account not be received in order to ensure timely payment and to obtain a duplicate account when the account is not delivered during the normal billing cycle.\u00a0 All our policies are available on our website <\/em>www.overstrand.gov.za<\/a>.<\/em> <\/span>See the following note on the back of <\/em>Overstrand Municipality <\/em>(sic). If no account has been received by the 10<\/em>th of a month, a copy should be obtained from the Municipality. This month the accounts were posted late due to the knew <\/em><\/span><\/em>(sic) lay out of the account and we apologise for this.\u00a0 From November 2011 it will be back to normal again.\u00a0 We calculate the accounts on the 25th of each month and send it within 4 days.\u00a0 Although the due date is on the 20th of the month, you are welcome to pay it on the first of the month.\u00a0 You are welcome to phone our offices and request your amount.” <\/em>The ‘Customer Care’<\/em> wording in the Policy is a misnomer!<\/span><\/p>\n

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

The Sweet Service Award goes to Gerry of the St George’s Mall branch of TELKOM, who helped me rectify a problem with the paid-for itemised billing on the telephone account not showing cell phone calls made, the most costly calls made on any business line. \u00a0The telephone account had an (unrequested) National-call only setting, instead […]<\/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":[3,124,248,21],"tags":[32366,32378,9903,13698,13658,32377,3114,957,32395,13660,566,5543,32373,1771],"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