{"id":3729,"date":"2009-08-28T00:35:01","date_gmt":"2009-08-27T22:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=3729"},"modified":"2009-08-29T14:50:11","modified_gmt":"2009-08-29T12:50:11","slug":"woolworths-sweet-and-google-sour-service-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/whale-cottage-portfolio\/woolworths-sweet-and-google-sour-service-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Woolworths Sweet and Google Sour Service Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sweet Service Award<\/strong>\u00a0 goes to Woolworths in Regent Road in Sea Point, for trusting a customer with payment for a trolley-full of groceries on the day that Woolworths had a technical problem in accepting payment by credit card.\u00a0\u00a0 A small sign, not visible to customers entering the store, stated that the store could only take payment in cash, which meant that most customers arrived at the till with their trollies, wanting to pay with their credit cards.\u00a0\u00a0 An imprint was done of the card, and the customer was asked to\u00a0sign the credit card slip when next in the store, given that she is a regular shopper at the store.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Sour Service Award <\/strong>goes to Google and its representative in South Africa, New Approach Marketing, based in Johannesburg.\u00a0 About once a week a heavily British-accented person calls guest houses, starting with the insulting introduction to the effect of: “Hello ma’m, I am calling from Google.\u00a0 Have you ever heard of our company?”.\u00a0 This is enough to get one’s back up.\u00a0\u00a0 When one questions where they are calling from, the caller gets defensive, especially when one has a caller with such a\u00a0distinctive British accent\u00a0claiming to call from Johannesburg.\u00a0 Any questioning of this has led to a torrent of abuse, including a lady caller, who decided to call back to add to the verbal abuse of her male colleague, by calling the\u00a0recipient of the call a racist and referring to our\u00a0countryfolk as “blimming South Africans”! \u00a0The call centre staff are rude, and never allow one to finish a sentence, that it would be a surprise if they sold anyone Google adwords.\u00a0 A more gentle salesperson later in the day explained that New Approach Marketing is representing Google in South Africa, and can get guest houses in Hermanus in the top 10 of Google for searches on “B & B in Hermanus” and similar, in “8 – 12 weeks”,\u00a0on a “no contract” basis, at the cost of R 1 300 per month\u00a0+ VAT + R 265 set up fee.\u00a0\u00a0 He explained the broad Manchester dialect in that 30 of his colleagues have come from the UK to set up a branch of the company in Johannesburg, to train South Africans to take over the call centre eventually, and will move to Perth and to Canada, to set up similar operations there.\u00a0\u00a0 As a company was calling\u00a0on behalf of \u00a0S A Tourism a few months ago, the caller was asked if the calls are being done on behalf of S A Tourism – his diplomatic but evasive answer was “not as far as I am aware”.\u00a0\u00a0The content of the call was reported to George, the\u00a0manager of New Approach Marketing in Johannesburg, and he promised to investigate.\u00a0\u00a0 His response was that it must be a competitor company calling directly from the UK, also representing Google,\u00a0that made the abusive calls!<\/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 Woolworths in Regent Road in Sea Point, for trusting a customer with payment for a trolley-full of groceries on the day that Woolworths had a technical problem in accepting payment by credit card.\u00a0\u00a0 A small sign, not visible to customers entering the store, stated that the store could only […]<\/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":[124,75,248,22,21],"tags":[32367,1153,545,32378,1933,1215,287,32377,1932,1934,1931,100,1935,862,32373,10,1070,171],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\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