{"id":4507,"date":"2009-10-30T13:32:15","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T11:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2009-10-30T13:32:15","modified_gmt":"2009-10-30T11:32:15","slug":"haute-cabriere-sweet-and-rocketseed-sour-service-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/franschhoek\/haute-cabriere-sweet-and-rocketseed-sour-service-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Haute Cabriere Sweet and Rocketseed Sour Service Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sweet Service Award<\/strong>\u00a0 goes to Haute Cabriere in Franschhoek, for hosting the guest house owners of Franschhoek for a cellar tour of Cabriere, and a generous lunch, as a way of saying thank you for the\u00a0support they have received from the accommodation establishments, and to introduce their new menu for summer.\u00a0 Matthew Gordon is the chef who prepared the lovely meal, and his wife Nicky looked after the guests.\u00a0 All courses were paired with Cabriere wines, and Huguenot\u00a0Fine Chocolates gave each guest a gift pack of chocolate footballs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Sour Service Award<\/strong>\u00a0 goes to Rocketseed and its\u00a0sales executive\u00a0Sam.\u00a0 Sam recently called Whale Cottage Franschhoek to sell the Rocketseed banner advertising.\u00a0 She started her call by stating that she was calling on behalf of the Franschhoek Tourism Bureau, who had made use of the banner advert of the company.\u00a0\u00a0She then proactively said she was not calling to sell advertising.\u00a0 However, she launched into a sales call for the\u00a0company’s banner advertising.\u00a0 When she was asked how she could say that she was not selling advertising, she stated that she was selling ‘banner advertising’ which differs from ‘advertising’, in her opinion.\u00a0\u00a0The Franschhoek Tourism Bureau confirmed that they had not instructed Rocketseed to call members of the Franschhoek Tourism Bureau.\u00a0\u00a0 Later that day Whale Cottage received an e-mail from Johan Huisamen, a Director of Rocketseed. He was told about the interaction with Sam, but had been contacted by the Franschhoek tourism bureau already, and had been asked to desist from implying that the bureau was endorsing the sales calls.\u00a0\u00a0 On Twitter Whale Cottage picked up\u00a0three Tweets sent by Sam about the incident,\u00a0defaming\u00a0Protea Hotels and Whale Cottage (she had thought she was speaking to the Franschhoek Inn, now the Protea Hotel Franschhoek).\u00a0 A half-hearted apology was made by Sam on Twitter under pressure from her bosses, but no further direct apology has been received from Sam nor the company.\u00a0 Rocketseed in fact refused to take responsibility for the Twitter communication, saying that it was done in Sam’s private capacity – however they were made after her business sales call!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is the second Sour Service Award Rocketseed has received – previously it was for the rude interaction with a Director of Rocketseed, when Whale Cottage pointed out that the banner advertising is highly spam sensitive, and does not always reach its intended recipients, and that it has a design problem as to where it places the ‘footer’ of the banner advertisement when one replies to enquiries coming from accommodation websites.<\/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 Haute Cabriere in Franschhoek, for hosting the guest house owners of Franschhoek for a cellar tour of Cabriere, and a generous lunch, as a way of saying thank you for the\u00a0support they have received from the accommodation establishments, and to introduce their new menu for summer.\u00a0 Matthew Gordon 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":[124,14,20,248,21],"tags":[32378,32369,232,581,1825,2567,2485,2486,1377,2568,1587,952,32373,1771],"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