Cape Town Apartment Chronicles

Making Do in Cape Town

As a writer of blogs, I could write a review and start a travelogue of all the apartments we have stayed in, the restaurants we have visited, and other venues, whether for tourists or not. However, I suspect you are more interested in your holiday than in a commentary, especially about things not going right.

We checked out early from a place in Rugby to take another apartment in Pinelands. This is something we usually do: splitting our living arrangements in two and having an overlapping day to move from one location to another. Only once have we not done this, because the new place was just 200 metres away and the host had agreed to an early check-in.

The Rugby Apartment

The place in Rugby was one we liked after a few adjustments, including a visit from the host to try to make amends. However, the critical issue, as Brian noted, was that the place lacked a feminine touch. Broadly, it offered just the practical things for essential apartment living. For days, this niggled until the microwave played up and I had to use a mug to scoop food into another pot.

So, I wrote to the host to highlight the issues rather than complain, and this reflects some of what we have experienced with apartments in Cape Town.

Hello, I'm staying at your apartment with my partner. At first, I thought we could manage, but I need to inform you of a few things before I write a very honest review of our experience. It is a lovely place; we are comfortable and feel safe. However, you cannot manage a property from a lock box.

We are very domesticated people and are usually in Cape Town twice a year, sometimes for more than a month, staying in places as varied as Camps Bay, Sea Point, Foreshore, Muizenberg, and Bloubergstrand since 2019. We have a good idea about apartments, service, and the quality of accommodation.

First, we asked for a spare set of keys, which, as I informed you, we have always had with other places. Then, the size of the apartment is about half the over 600 square feet advertised on Booking.com.

Basic stuff: not enough hangers in the bedroom, many crooked. That's manageable. You have a kitchen but no kitchen knife; we bought one yesterday, just as there are no kitchen scissors. The Power Defrost and Power Level buttons are not working on the microwave. This was the last straw for me, because the prawns for our stir-fry ended up cooked, or we would have had to wait hours for a proper thaw.

The clothes rack should have been replaced; it is full of rust, and we can't hang clothes on it. We could use the clothesline, but we are strangers here. There is a litany of things I could list about the homeliness of your place, but we can manage. As I have said, you will need to visit your apartment to see that things work or are right. Having a lock box is not a substitute for that responsibility. Thank you.

We ended up buying a proper kitchen knife, and this is the third time we have had to do this. It could have happened many more times if Brian had forgotten to bring the typical kitchen utensils we had acquired over time: spatulas, a sauce ladle, and some deep bowls.

When the host came to visit, some 30 minutes behind schedule, he brought a set of ten hangers and a bottle of plonk that might have passed for cooking wine, if Brian's taste for alcohol had not got the better of him.

Moving to Pinelands

After church yesterday, we packed up for this new place in Pinelands, which backs onto a Jewish cemetery just about 150 metres away and is clearly visible from the seventh-floor window. You can bet my vivid imagination is under serious curtailment, and I hope the rational will overwhelm the irrational, as I do not intend to lose my mind in the process.

We encountered the usual issues again. People do not cook, hence the kitchen setup is lacking. Once, we had to buy a pot, and this place has just one pot for cooking. There is no kitchen knife, but we already have one. Surprise: there is a pair of scissors in the kitchen drawer.

There is a thriving takeaway and fast-food culture in South Africa, where ingredients for food can be organic, fresh, and healthy, but people are not cooking, except when they have a braai.

Two bedrooms, not really the size that was advertised, but that is a minor point. There is a worktable from where I am typing, but no centre table in the living room, as if we should eat off our laps. In the fire escape, we found two stools and a floor mat that matched the one in the apartment. I think we can consider ourselves resourceful.

Making the Space Work

We had to change the orientation of the bed, as it was just wrong. When our hostess returned that afternoon, she agreed that the realignment was better. However, what I cannot understand is the dearth of sockets in these apartments. We had to get extension leads with dual sockets to have somewhere to plug in our devices.

She cannot remember the Wi-Fi password, as the two she provided did not work. Meanwhile, I found a way around the issue. The Google TV box connected to the television has a Wi-Fi hotspot feature, but when switched on, it disables the Wi-Fi connection. Usually, the WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) button on the router should work, but we failed to get a link.

I connected the Google TV box to the router with an Ethernet cable and set up the Wi-Fi hotspot. That way, we have Internet connectivity without the fuss, or we would have had to wait until Tuesday to get that sorted.

Meeting Miranda Priestly

We joined her in the lift and, whilst she understandably refused entry to another resident with a shopping trolley (though there was enough space for all of us), it was the mother holding a baby that she barred, which left us stunned. Her explanation: "I am the Miranda Priestly of this apartment block." The funny thing is, on my first visit to South Africa in May 2015, I did watch The Devil Wears Prada on my outward flight. I did not expect to meet her in real life.

We have different panoramic views of Table Mountain, and just a glimpse of the sea, even though it is almost seven miles away. For that alone, I am not so forlorn this far inland in Cape Town.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Laundered to distress by Laundryheap

Bewitched by convenience

Their unique selling proposition was more than just attractive but extremely convenient considering the circumstances, for the nearest dry cleaner to me was almost a kilometre away, somewhat expensive, sometimes delivering poor quality service and most of all, I had to take my laundry to them and had to given them at least three days for me to pick up my stuff.

Laundryheap was convenience wrapped up in an online portal with a 24-hour turnaround allowing for their couriers to do a door-laundry-door pick-up and delivery, as long as I had a credit card they could charge once the job was done. They had been my drycleaners since July 2016.

I was sold on the 24 hours spiel, it was irresistibly perfect for my situation.

Those bags were big and I filled two of them.

I probably used them 3 or 4 times a year with my laundry bill averaging £200 to £250 per service. Suits, jackets, shirts, ties, cravats, overcoats, trousers and then shorts were what I got them to do. However, the pandemic has meant I have not used formal wear that much, that I have only utilised the service the last two Decembers and this November.

That’s a light delivery

This last time was an ordeal that totally deviated from the kind of service I was accustomed to, it felt like they were deliberately trying to lose my custom, and whatever might have informed that performance, has not been properly explained to me.

On Wednesday, I put in a request for a collection and gathered my clothes in two piles of inventories according to the item and separated them into bags labelled ‘Dryclean’ and ‘Wash & Iron’, the courier arrived towards the later part of the pick-up window and all I had to do was wait until the next day.

The delivery window came just within the 24 hours of the collection, I received a bag and some hangers, the volume and lightness meant something was missing. I had seen from the billing that some things were drycleaned and some were washed & ironed, meaning they did process the two bags of clothes, the bigger shock was I had 20 items of clothing returned out of 58 items collected the previous day.

Good thing I did an itemisation of clothing to be collected, would have to take pictures of labels too?

Make pictures of words

Missing from the delivery was 3 jackets, 5 2-piece suits, all 9 cravats, the overcoat that did not belong to me, and all my shirts, 20 of them. So, I contacted the chat line which consisted of named but faceless bots hosted in Bangalore, when my clothes were dry cleaned on location in Longsight, just 3 kilometres away.

As they had no phone number to call, I was left to type out details of my complaint and missing items that they were to relay to another team and that might eventually reach the facilities or logistics team at Longsight. Each interaction towards finding my clothes was initiated by me, there was no initiative on their part to keep me updated on the progress of finding my clothes, I was fobbed off stock responses, ‘Rest assured, we are working hard to ensure you things are found by our team.’ And anything else to that effect.

Then I was even offered a £10.70 compensation voucher for my inconvenience as they asked for particular details about my missing items to help them locate where they might be. I found myself exercising powers of recall you never have to use when using a laundry service with the hope that one particular description might stand out enough to lead whoever was looking to a pile of clothes belonging to one person, inadvertently missed in the logistics processing.

Item Type:
Brand/label:
Colour/pattern/design:
Size (if relevant):
Any other distinguishing features:

Size and colour, I could generally remember, brands for my suits I could except for the bespoke ones, the jackets I mostly got from a catalogue apart from one, I never really checked to see what label it had apart from knowing one was 4 sizes smaller belonging to a friend, another 2 sizes smaller, belonging to Brian, the shirts? God help me.

Now, the hours were days

Soon, I got a message my clothes had been found, but the updated billing did not reflect the reality of what I was expecting, I had to question the inventory as they scheduled the delivery for Friday night between 19:00 and 22:00, only to inform me that due to some unforeseen circumstances, the delivery had been postponed to Saturday for the same window. By then, I had been billed fully.

My distress was just compounded by the fact that they were not proactive or prompt with telling of the changes in planned arrangements. It would have assuaged my angst if someone just called me, that never happened. A few minutes to the Saturday window of delivery, it was postponed to Monday. I had given up on chasing them and was looking at the legal options for corporate theft and compensation.

Thank you very much

This evening, I received a message that I was at the end of a 20 deep queue of delivery stops, then it changed to someone expecting to get to my door in 19 minutes. Just 121 hours after what was supposed to be a service touted as “Laundry & Dry Cleaning to your home in 24 hours” my clothes arrived. I simply counted them and put them away. If any are damaged through handling, I cannot care less or even more.

Whilst the likelihood of using Laundryheap again is remote to totally unlikely, if they have no competition, it might come into consideration. However, a £10.70 compensation for an order that I paid over £310 for and was not delivered on time, is an insult more than derisory. I could fully afford my laundry bill; I did not choose them for charitable or humanitarian reasons to my account. The service is what I paid for; the compensation is like throwing pennies at me.

We are done, for now

What is a 3% compensation for the angst and distress of possibly losing your clothes? Conceptually, Laundryheap might be a useful service, I have my doubts about the heart and soul of the owners being nearer the customer than their profits.

For that, I would be seeking out all sites that provide review services for Laundryheap to award 1-star for customer service and support, even if the other part of the equation can easily get a 4-star rating. They were let down by the service and when it comes to personal items like clothing, it is those little things that become the end of custom and the loss of recommendations. In Laundryheap, which did so well for a while, I am quite sorely unimpressed and totally disappointed.

Edinburgh: Then I found a hotel that shouldn't be in this business

I’m a sleeping dog, let me lie

As a tourist to a city, a guest in a hotel or a customer in a restaurant or any establishment that provides a service, I am a quiet unassuming, disinterested and unperturbed person, quite so if everything is just as it should be. I am rarely effusive with praise and loath to excoriate.

However, shift out of the standard deviation of expected service and I have a broad tolerance of excellence to incompetence and you will for posterity become a search result on the Internet, my perspective of my experience.

Having worked in Edinburgh for 5 weeks, I have found myself in a variation of the theme of The Frog Prince, I have already stayed in 5 hotels and have proverbially kissed just as many frogs seeking a prince. Now in my sixth hotel, I seem to have kissed a toad, maybe even something as dreadful as a lamprey.

Why were they advertised?

This Centre Townhouse is anything but what it purports to be. From the next day after I booked the place on Hotels.com, it has been an ever-increasing debilitating nightmare. The warning signs were there, I gamely ignored them and considering the booking was made late at night, I probably was not alert enough to the little troublesome elements this establishment and that word I use under advisement.

I had booked a room with an en-suite bathroom and it was one of those instances where I decided not to pay up-front but pay at the hotel, the first clue being there were no reviews of the place yet. Hotels.com as the broker of the transaction guarantees my booking and acts as an escrow service, my booking was confirmed through my credit card.

The next morning, I received an email from the hotel, suggesting my card had been declined and that I should offer another means of payment. That should never have happened and so I contacted Hotels.com to inquire as to how my card that was accepted through my booking on the website could now be declined by an establishment that was only to get paid on my arrival.

Hotels dot incomprehensible

Hotels.com informed me that my booking had been cancelled by the establishment and that the issue of my declined card was being investigated by their internal transactions team, they had no other information for me, however, someone from the team would call me in under three hours.

The status of my confirmed booking did not change on the Hotels.com website through to the next morning when I called to remonstrate about the unsatisfactory customer service and unnecessary distress about having a declined credit card, a long way from home.

The staff then called the hotel directly, gave them assurances that the booking will be paid for on arrival and reconfirmed to me that everything was fine. Not an hour after that call, I received another email from the hotel still asking for a guaranteed and alternative means of payment.

A dishonest ruse

I then called Centre Townhouse directly to determine what the problem really was and as it transpired, they did not have a means to take credit/debit card payments. So, rather than come clean that they were unready for modern hotelier business they set up the ruse that my card had been declined to prompt me to contact them to agree to pay cash on arrival. Dishonest does not begin to describe my view of that behaviour that I called Hotels.com the next morning to complain about this underhand business practice.

Hotels.com did not help ameliorate the situation and had I not accrued a loyalty reward scheme over 4 years of being a customer, I would have immediately transferred my loyalties to a rival hotel booking site. The agent at the other end of the phone, probably in an outsourced location completely oblivious of typically first-world problems and angst could not for the want of trying comprehend the distress of having a card declined and the risk of carrying around hundreds of pounds in a society that is progressively a cashless society.

My feedback to Hotels.com on this situation has not garnered a response yet. The Hotels.com agent seemed to have taken the side of the hotelier and their cock and bull story. I was none too pleased when I learnt that the hotel would hopefully by the weekend have a card machine, it was not going to happen, these people were chancers, they got by, by bending the truth without scruples.

Is this the hotel?

I arrived at the ‘hotel’ by taxi and there was no signpost outside, the main door which was ajar and the cab driver was a tad suspicious and concerned that I might have arrived at the wrong place, but that was the address I had. I walked in and I was welcomed into what seemed to have been a big townhouse converted into a number of apartments. The self-contained living quarters on the ground floor had been rejigged into a configuration with a big bedroom accessed by a keycode lock which became my room.

The living room had a split function as my sitting room and the hotel reception, with access to a kitchen where I could use the microwave oven but not the gas stove or the oven. The combined toilet and bathroom was not en-suite, the lock insecure, the toilet brush broken, and the toilet was exclusively mine to use except when others came to use the living room to entertain guests and their cacophony became my disturbance.

On my first morning there, I had a face full of shaving foam only to find that the shower was not working. I sent an SMS text message to the hotelier to have it fixed which was sorted whilst I was at work.

There were no towels in my room and when I asked for towels, I was told I had to pay £2 for the use of a towel. My room does not even qualify as a bed and breakfast arrangement, but for the perfunctory wireless internet complimentary service, I am at loss as to how to class this rip-off.

These are bounders on the make

The £400 for my 5-night stay I had already withdrawn from the bank and put in an envelope that I gave the albeit pleasant hotelier with whom I had a long friendly conversation, but the truth of the matter cannot be lost to pleasantries.

At the very minimum, an establishment masquerading as a hotel or at the very least aspiring to the standard of a bed and breakfast would have a signpost outside, a reception, the room and bed as advertised, a chair and table, a television, tea making facilities, a hair dryer (not that I need one), toiletries including a towel, probably ironing facilities and everyday housekeeping. I was not aware my bed would not be made every day.

Close this travesty

The setup as it stands at the Centre Townhouse is probably best suited for a motel for a night or a brothel by the hour, going by the charge for towels. This is no hotel, these people though pleasant, have no business being in the hospitality business, it is disastrously amateurish with a money-grabbing hand absent of understanding what it takes to run any semblance of a hotel facility. To suggest I am appalled is to be effusive with praise.

I should have at the first opportunity cancelled this booking, I will endure the 5 nights, it is not the end of the world, but the end of this charade running in the hospitality industry and having a berth on a hotel booking website cannot come soon enough. One is not by terms impressed.

This is a review of my own personal experience of staying at Centre Townhouse for five nights at the end of May into the beginning of June. It is written honestly, without prejudice and truthfully, each individual experience in a hotel establishment varies, I cannot speak for others, I speak for myself.

Centre Townhouse
70 Gilmore Place
Edinburgh
EH3 9NX

South Africa: Uber despite the annoyances

Uber knows

Being in a strange city or a foreign country, apart from airport shuttles to my hotel, I have been quite confident to use the Uber taxi service to get around town.

In Johannesburg where places could be so obscure, and some addresses are at best a guess rather than a precise location, that relying on the Uber navigation aids is very useful.

However, whilst reviewing some of my journeys to and from our offices dotted around Johannesburg and the suburbs, I could not help but think I was being taken for a ride in some sort of disadvantageous collusion between Uber and the driver against me.

Uber throes

Some journeys just seemed to be twice as long in the distance without really making up for time or missing the traffic and with that an unexpected tour of the periphery of Johannesburg, the cost, no doubt outrageous.

It got to a head that I had to register a complaint with Uber about my trips, because to my mind I was being unfairly taken advantage of, either through design, some Machiavellian scheme or the quirks of technology having a mind of its own. My complaint:

I am unhappy that on a number of journeys between Randburg and Sandton, I am taken on unnecessarily long journeys via the freeway doubling the distance that would have been covered without the need for a bypass especially when there is light traffic going into Sandton.

The idea that the distance from Randburg/North Riding to Sandton should be 33km is outrageous and a total rip-off.

One would have expected Uber to provide options of the shortest and probably the most optimal journeys rather than defaulting to the longest possible marathon coverable between 2 points in Johannesburg.

I have no problems with the drivers, but between Uber and the guidance offered by your navigation systems, this customer relationship is not only badly served, but seriously fleeced too.

Please do not spam my mail box with requests for comment, just sort this matter out.

Thank you.

Uber blows

Uber eventually apologised and offered a ZAR 50 compensation that was deducted from my next journey and whilst it appears things have been a bit better, it does not half ameliorate the fact that I have been well and truly rogered and ultimately fleeced.

The additional annoyance is that for every comment I leave, I get more spam from Uber asking me to comment on my comments, I really do not have the time for more small talk, just have the service delivered with professionalism and consideration.

I guess one other thing that will not go amiss on the Uber app is giving me the list of my most recent locations and destinations as well as not generalising street names when there is a possibility that there are many occurrences of that street name in the same city.

Uber glows

On such event was where there were two Industrial Roads in Johannesburg, the one we first arrived at was not right and in one morning I had a 66-kilometre ride on Uber for what should never have been more than 18 kilometres just because I trusted Uber to know better than I did about where I was going.

Besides all this, I will still happily use Uber, even if drivers end up on the wrong side of the road and I have to hobble across the wide and dangerous Johannesburg roads, cane in hand to join my ride.

For better for worse, Uber is here to stay, it, however, should get better at precision, direction, instruction and value.

Our ordeal at The Royal York Hotel

Swearing never again

With my friend visiting from Germany for a week, we decided on making a tourist trip into Yorkshire, stopping over in Leeds to see an old and even taller German friend of his before spending the night in York.

As we boarded the tour bus in York the following morning we were regaled with the legendary yarn that when Queen Victoria visited York in September 1854 on her way to Balmoral, she was entertained in the banqueting rooms of the railway station where after dispensing with those pleasantries of pomp and pageantry she was presented with the bill. As the story is told, she felt insulted that she swore never to visit York again.

One Queen in the 19^th Century having a rotten experience in York and then to find our imperial selves on the end of another rotten York experience was turning out to be more than a coincidence, we were literally sworn to never return.

As we left

However, for the quick thinking of the Operations Manager of The Royal York Hotel which backs onto the York railway station yesterday morning, that would have been the case. We received a 50% refund on the cost of our room for the night as a sort of compensation for the ordeal we suffered in the narrative that follows.

The way I had planned the weekend was to stopover in Leeds for an hour and then arrive in York in the later afternoon to visiting some interesting places before continuing our tourism the next morning.

However, we spent over four hours in Leeds and by the time we arrived in the York, we were literally exhausted. We had booked a superior twin room and were promptly checked-in for Room 504.

A nightmare in York

The room was on the fifth floor, but the installed elevator only covered the first three floor and then we had to climb stairs in what might have been an annex of the original building to get to the fifth floor.

On entering our room, we took off our jackets and I made to open the window which I found would not yield, the rolled screen-blind itself was damaged as the string stays that were to work on both ends of the blind when the drawstring was being pulled had broken on one end. I did a quick fix of it and I drew up the blind.

The window had the older wooden sash window on the outside lifted just about 10 centimetres, but the inner double-glazing window was sealed shut, meaning there was no ventilation in the room. I then looked around to see if the room had air-conditioning and there was none.

No ventilation or draught

For a room of this standard and quite an exorbitant price, it was quite strange to realise that it had not air-conditioning installed. At which point I was beginning to feel stuffy and out-of-breath that we returned to the reception to have something done about it.

Apparently, the hotel was fully booked, so they could not move us, but they offered to install two fans in the room and we sat in the lobby until they had taken care of the matter along with the unconvincing spiel the Operations Manager delivered us about safety, noise and whatever else.

We caught a nap for a few hours, freshened up and went out for dinner. My friend wanted something quintessentially English and with the help of a couple that took a liking to my mode of dressing we found a garden restaurant where we tucked into servings of steak and ale pie with peas and chips.

Of sleep that didn’t last

Back at the hotel we planned out what we were going to do in the morning and settled down to sleep, only that we really could not sleep, there was something not right with the room and it was the window not open to help dissipate the summer heat in our room.

After hours of tossing and turning, I had another look at the window completely screwed shut and had no way of remedying the situation. My friend also woke up complete unrelaxed and displeased that we were going through such an ordeal. At which point I was ready to write my review of this stay long before we had even checked out, that option did not seem to be available as I tweeted about what was looking like the worse hotel stay in my life.

At the lobby in the dead of the night

I told my friend I was going to the lobby with the hope of getting a better wireless internet signal, donning the hotel-supplied bathrobe and slippers I made for the lobby and sat in one of the seats. The feeling of air blowing through my legs was more than refreshing, I could have spent the rest of the night there.

I then called my friend to come downstairs and sit with me before we decided whether to return to our room for the night. After about 20 minutes, I walked over to the reception desk to remonstrate with of the witching-hour ferocity I could find about the unsuitability of our room for habitation.

It transpired that they were aware of problems with that room even when they all assumed the double-glazing window could be lifted a bit to let air in. The manager could not find us another room and so sent his colleague up with us to have a look at the problem.

A temporary fix

This time they decided to undo the screws holding the window down for which he acquired a screwdriver over a foot long.

On unfastening the screws, the window was still stuck and in that was a revelation that rather than fix the window, they screwed it shut and tried to use health and safety reasons to justify it.

Eventually, the window was forced open but it would not stay up, the long screwdriver became the means to hold it up and with that the refreshing influx of fresh air and the escaping of built up mustiness and humidity that condensed on the inward facing part of the sash window for about an hour.

Checking out

We finally got some sleep but were too displeased to stay for breakfast that we made to check-out as soon as we could. I asked to speak to the manager, but the manager having been informed of our ordeal had asked the staff to inform him of when we were checking out because he wanted to chat to us.

He took notes as I related our experience and I categorically stated the room should never have been on the market and definitely not at the rate we paid. He offered a complimentary stay which I declined, there was no way I would be visiting that hotel again. Then he offered compensation and I retorted, we could afford the room that is why we paid the asking price, we would have rather had a good room than an ordeal assuaged with compensation.

I left him the options of what he thought would be the best way to help banish the thought of ever visiting York as a result of our staying at The Royal York Hotel. He made an offer of a 25% refund and then I asked my friend for an opinion.

He said the matter of percentages was neither here nor there, our ordeal was unacceptable, the least he would consider in relation to our experience would be at least a 50% refund. We agreed on that and the cost was refunded to my credit card and we left the hotel to embark on a bus tour of York amongst other things.

And so …

On reflection, I noted that when we returned to the reception the first time, it was right for us to sit in the lobby rather than return to our room to wait for the first solution to be put in place. When we returned to the lobby the second time in the middle of the night, sitting down for a while in our bath robes before lodging a strenuous complaint meant that the staff were obliged to visit the room with us to see the problem and implement a quick fix.

It also meant they had to report the issue to the day manager for some sort of resolution to be presented to us when we were checking out.

I have always had an issue with the tendency to default to compensation immediately after a poor service has been reported. I always make it a point to stress that I could afford the service in the first place and I would rather have the service than have pennies thrown back at me to assuage to my discomfort.

I accepted the 50% refund not to appear completely implacable because I would never have been persuaded to revisit The Royal York Hotel under any circumstances, they had failed at making a good first impression and it could not be redeemed.

Finally, they have promised to close Room 504 to business and take it off the books until they could the window, the ventilation or implement a scheme that will make the room more habitable than we found it. With the ‘royal’ name, we felt like being on the top floor we had returned to the 21^st Century version of the old use of the Tower of London. We might return to York, but not to that hotel.

Thought Picnic: Giving Them A Good Piece Of My Mind

A piece of my mind

Seeing a psychologist gives you the opportunity to speak your mind without prejudice and that is what I did when we met this afternoon.

I relayed to her what happened with regards to meeting with her, the social worker, the doctor and Lewisham Housing Services, then I spoke of my expectations making clear comparisons with experiences I had with similar circumstances in The Netherlands.

The gaping holes in the safety net

The fact is the system for handling exceptional cases like mine where I do not seem to fit into pre-defined categories, but have a compelling case worthy of assessment and consideration is disjointed, incoherent and basically a mess.

Caught in flagrante in Manchester

Simmering and cooling off

I was back in Manchester this weekend literally spoiling for a fight to pick up my glasses which Vision Express expressly did not have the courtesy to expressively inform me of as to the progress in sorting my order out knowing full well that I was from out of town even though after phone calls to them I was told and assured I will be informed but no information came to my notice.

Meanwhile, on the train from Chester, a journey lasting just 75 minutes had me sat in the middle of a crowd I would not have chosen but for the circumstances.

Behind me was a young man in his twenties but with the mental development of an obstreperous 3-year old being chaperoned back home. He got restless, fidgety and kicked violently at the back of my seat everytime the train stopped.

Holding my hair piece

In other circumstances, I would have remonstrated but this was one of those situations where it was just best to live and let live, enduring it for the experience of knowing how fortunate most of us are and how longsuffering their carers might be not forgetting the frustrations of a big man caught in the throes of a small child.

In front, there was a couple of the alternative kind where one in that time had quaffed two bottles of blue vodka and he still had two legs to stand on when we got off the train.

The conductor found time to joke, apparently, Justin Bieber, whoever that is was performing in town and he said he had just heard from the organisers that the concert had been cancelled because Justin had to wash his hair. Much laughter filled the train.

A 419 experience

When I got to my hotel, I was put on the top floor which required the use of steps because it is not serviced by a lift. When I showed the receptionist my cane, he promptly relocated me to a more accessible floor and also close to the lifts. The room number was 419.

I decided on having no breakfast at the hotel, basically, if they could not get mere toast right that it was just toasted on one side, it was unlikely that whatever else they were offering would be up to palatable standards, I had experienced it before – cheap, tacky and avoidable.

Then I made for Vision Express where my first pair was ready and the spare pair was still in the laboratory. I asked to speak to the manager to remonstrate about the lack of adequate customer service.

Appeased with a deal

She arrived with my spare pair which had different lenses from the main pair. That was not what I  had ordered, they were both supposed to be photo-chromatic or as the lingo is nowadays, transition, scratch-resistant and anti-glare – at least in my case, there was no reason for me to order different pairs of lenses if I wanted to be able to interchange glasses.

The change would normally have cost extra but as a sop or some sort of appeasement, they were offered for free though that would mean another visit to Manchester in maybe fortnight.

The rest of the weekend in Manchester was not that eventful, clubs that required membership for me to gain entrance presented a hostile side to the city which should have been catered for with the presentation of a hotel key card signifying I was from out of town.

Hallelujah in my birthday suit

I found a Nigerian restaurant called Hallelujah African Cuisine, when I called to ask about their services, I learnt they will close late because there was a night vigil – maybe, I should pray a bit more over my food, but honestly, these divinely inspired names of businesses that seem to want to double as shrines to the Levitical priesthood are more amusing than to be taken too seriously. I had a good meal there.

We are to check-out of the hotel at 11:00AM, I am usually barely able to do that until maybe 11:15AM but before 11:00AM there were knocks on my door despite the fact that I had a red Do Not Disturb sign on the door knob.

I cannot think of who could have removed it that by 11:10AM before I could answer the door, the lady was in my room and there I was in flagrante deprehensus nuda nudus...

Thought Picnic: Reasonableness is the test of a good compliant

Getting it heard

I have written many letters of complaint and the last few weeks I think I have been prolific. Upon reviewing some of them, I decided it would be interesting to share what I view as components or the anatomy of a complaint letter.

Now, the reason I complain is usually to get something done about the situation, I am assertive but never aggressive, detailed but I doubt to the point of verbosity. I am not a habitual complainant, if things are working as they should, I am mostly satisfied and I will commend the persons or the service.

Who can sort it out?

What I have noticed is I first explain the situation, how I am affected, how it affects me, the frustration it brings, appeal to their goodness, ask for a resolution and make it clear that it is not my last resort.

The most important part is knowing who to complain to, it has to be someone with authority who can do something about it, seek out managers, where they fail, seek out their managers until you get to where the balance of reputation over indifference is too high for the responsible party to ignore.

The test of reasonableness

The litmus test of a complaint is reasonableness. The question you should always ask yourself is, am I being reasonable and would an independent party reading this letter see the reasonableness of the redress I seek?

Basically, reasonableness forces the person you are complaining to to step into your shoes and feel the way you are feeling. Only sociopaths will not respond positively to a very reasonable complaint. In most cases, if not all, I have obtained better than the redress I have sought.

Here is one I wrote recently, the headers are just for guidance and I have removed specific information from with the text.

Who I am

To Whom It May Concern, [I had a contact email address to the head office with a name, someone was going to pick it up and then act on it.]

I am a long-staying guest in a party of 5 who arrived at your hotel recently. We are on business from the UK with a requirement that we have constant communication with our office in the UK and the United States by email and conferencing 24 hours a day as well as access to local amenities.

We moved from another hotel because of its poor standard and poor customer service, one of the reasons why we chose your hotel was because it had Wi-Fi which is essential for conferencing and much else.

The situation

Now, for over a week, we have lost this Wi-Fi service and the manager at the hotel appears to have been completely clueless as to why that service was lost, first she said it was a network problem with service provider affecting other hotels but each time we asked she had some other story that we independently contacted the service provider and found that the contract between them and your hotel had been cancelled.

When I told her this, she expressed surprise at the information insisting she was right, by which time, our frustration with the seeming inability for the manager to own the problem has led to a complete breakdown of trust in anything she has to say.

My frustration

We find that we are in a 4* hotel with 0* staff desperately trying to make our 3 week stay that was supposed to be home away from home a harrowing experience as if your hotel is vying for a Worst Hotel Prize just because of poor problem management and an apparent lack of consideration or forth-coming solution to a long-standing problem.

Any good hotel provides internet connectivity either free or paid for, there is never a case of the absence of that service and while people staying for just a few days might not bother, those like myself staying for weeks find the situation untenable but that other detail is we now have a good experience of how the hotel is being run - in this case, quite badly.

My exasperation spilling out

This morning, the manager had another one of her stories, a new phone line will be installed on Monday and thereafter, maybe, just maybe, and the wireless connectivity might be restored. I have no reason to believe that this problem will be solved by the time we leave.

We will however leave with memories of never to consider your hotel chain anywhere in the world and ensure that our review of your hotel on the websites where it appears will highlight we were residents for over 3 weeks and for 66% of the time we were locked in the worst French hospitality experience we have ever had - we don't even have the comfort of just one channel on our televisions in English to compensate for the loss of the essential internet service.

You can do something about this

I wonder if this situation can ever be redeemed, but with this email, I hope that those who matter have been informed that this matter will not end with our leaving your hotel on our departure, every seemingly local situation has the possibility of gaining a global face - hopefully it is for a good publicity rather than for ugly customer service.

Yours sincerely.

The resolution

By the time the day was over we were offered a contingency Wi-Fi service that all guests could use from the hotel lobby, I was offered a discounted stay for my next visit, I engaged the manager in consequent problem-solving and by the time we left, the full Wi-Fi service had been restored to the hotel.

My frustration was borne from my having obtained more information about the problem than was volunteered by the staff at the hotel, the only thing I could do was escalate the situation to their head office where someone fully understood what I felt and acted to ameliorate the situation.

I will in due course share other effective complaint letters that get things done.

Villa Bellagio - A Welcome Result

Speaking up

The saga about my access to wireless internet services at my hotel took a new turn yesterday when I decided to write to the Villa Bellagio head office about the issues of customer service and problem management I have written about over the last few days not failing to attach the picture of a red cross over the free Wi-Fi service icon.

The need to escalate this problem was evident from the fact that I had lost complete confident in the manager to seek a problem resolution or even provide a temporary solution to the problem.

Presence matters

Evidently, she just did not have the bearing even in her own organisation to first take ownership of the problem and then think outside the box as one would have expected considering the hotel itself had a private Wi-Fi service that could have been co-opted without unnecessary angst.

I soon got a reply from the head office explaining the situation which appears to corroborate the manager’s stories. The management of the hotel had only recently changed and Swisscom terminated the contract without notice, so the hotel has been working to restore the service, though it has been taking quite a while.

It goes without saying that one does need a presence and bearing to convincingly carry a title and an office along with the gravitas that allows people to trust your views and opinions. The hospitality industry is not for shrinking Violets and the demands of customers can be quite varied requiring differing solutions calling on initiative and good managerial ability.

Initiative is key

I see in this case that I was ahead of her in determining what the problem was and seeking an appropriate solution and in my correspondence with the head office; they offered to grant access to the private Wi-Fi service.

In thanking them, I asked that the information be available to grant me access on my return to the hotel but I have just received an email now with the password to the private Wi-Fi service and the offer of a discounted stay if I do visit again.

A result

I think we have a result along with a whole litany of how problems should be owned and properly managed to the satisfaction of the customer.

Now, I do hope that when I type in the password for the Wi-Fi access, it works first time and Villa Bellagio can begin to repair the damage their reputation has suffered so far.

However, this is not the complete solution for everyone, but it is for now good enough for those who have endured the loss of this service for 10 days.

Thought Picnic: No Vexatious Customer

It is important

Looking at issues to do with Problem Management some things are becoming quite evident. Seth Godin in his short blog a few days ago asked the simplest customer service frustration question of all saying, “why is it not as important to you as it is to me?”

This exemplifies the sense a customer has of a problem not being given the kind of attention, importance, significance and urgency the customer believes their complaint should have.

Feel my pain

For good measure it is when the customer senses when interacting with a human face that represents the possible solution to the problem that there is no empathy as if the service provider is indifferent, nonchalant or just irresponsible.

This is evident in words of conversation, responses or action predicating a refusal to take ownership of the problem such that the customer is left to feel there is no solution in sight.

The rage against indifference

The customer can adopt one of many approaches but the hardest one to adopt is appealing to the good nature of an apathetic service provider.

Some customers will however seek ways to bring about a desired response and resolution with tools within their means.

Beyond lethargic ombudsman engagement systems to expensive legal redress which all involve third-parties, the customer can now engage social media in the quest to have their problem managed and solved.

Getting even and listened to

It gives the customer the leverage and clout they once did not have where service providers have poor problem resolution processes and worse still, personnel who have no reputational stake in putting forward a professional face for themselves and the organisation they work for; we are left at the mercy of the presumably heartless.

Social media can at once be both aggressive and effective. Many have put it to good use and organisations are slowly relearning the hard lesson of the customer being king.

On blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on YouTube, the customer is demanding a responsive, friendly and empathetic service in words that read like - "I am not a vexatious customer, just one with a requirement I expect to be met." 

Bibles, sounds and complaints

Update 16-10-2008

I would usually make a fuss about this now, since I had not had a change in the circumstances but in what some friends have noted as a change in my character of sorts, I exercised patience and put the issue out of my mind. Unbeknownst to me, they were still working on sorting this out. I got another email today, saying it had all being sorted out. Behold, it was, the discrete chapters completely separate from the commentaries, introductions and other encumbrances.

So, I began the downloads on two systems, one reading from the top of the old testaments and the other reading from below at the end of the new testament upwards, lest I forget, I do not have to get an iDevice to do AAC files, this is also in MP3 format, I might rearrange the tagging of the files with the MP3Tag utility but one thing is sure, The Message would be heard loudly and clearly and I am already tickling myslef with excitement about it all.

Give it up to the guys at eStudySource, I am one very satisfied customer.

Update 13-10-2008

I was offered the iTunes AAC file format alternative at no extra cost which according to their email had 1,200 files, indicating the product was broken down into chapters rather than books of the bible. Unfortunately, it is still very much like the MP3 product in 66 files. I have written to them again to have it resolved.

Complain or move on?

Sometimes, I cannot be bothered to seek redress for a bad product because I do not have the time, I do not like my time being wasted or the run around with customer support organisations and their telephone menu tree systems that put you an array of decisions simply dumps you into an any other business pool where the keys you have pressed now have to expressed in words.

This morning, I ran into a bargain for The Message Bible which brings the obscurity the sometimes inscrutable English translations into contemporary culture.

For instance, compare this The Message [1] depiction of Hebrews 6:1-3

Heb 6:1 So come on, let's leave the preschool fingerpainting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on "salvation by self-help" and turning in trust toward God;

Heb 6:2 baptismal instructions; laying on of hands; resurrection of the dead; eternal judgment.

Heb 6:3 God helping us, we'll stay true to all that. But there's so much more. Let's get on with it!

With the 17^th Century version of the more commonly accepted King James Version (also known as KJV) [2] in charismatic circles.

Heb 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,

Heb 6:2 Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.

Heb 6:3 And this will we do, if God permit.

You so easily catch the premise of a preschool fingerpainting exercise and there is more written in that kind of language.

The Message

Rom 8:12 So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.

Rom 8:13 There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life.

Rom 8:14 God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

To

The King James Version

Rom 8:12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.

Rom 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Rom 8:14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

And you begin to see that the Bible might well be a very interesting, understanding and rewarding read. No thous that chaseth thee that ye dost faint in ignorance.

I like the idea of there being things to do and places to go for God.

Translations and interpretations

Zondervan, a Bible publishing company publishes a translation comparison continuum [3] which rates translations from Word-for-Word to Thought-for-Thought of the original texts. KJV being towards the left of the continuum and Message to the very right.

Taken from Zondervan

So, I now ordered the audio version of The Message Bible and what I got was far from what I expected, I was compelled to register a complaint as it appears below.

I would hope there is a version that is organised according to the books of the Bible with a distinct MP3 file per book at the minimum, else there should be clear warnings that the organisation is a mess before buyers like I get caught on what for me is a misleading situation.

The Complaint

I ordered Product Title: AB0004 - AUDIO: The Message - Complete Bible [4] amongst other titles this morning.

I could almost honestly say, I feel conned and misled.

When I went to download the material, it came as 66 files implying they were arranged in the 66 books of the Bible, but the size of Part 66 had me wonder why III John; the 65th book, would be so much larger than Revelation, the last book.

Then I found Part 66 started from Revelation 12 and Part 1 contained over 30 minutes of interesting but irrelevant commentary that should have been in a separate introductory MP3.

I have many Audio bibles and they are either offered and organised as 66 distinct books of the Bible or to a granular extent chapters of the particular books.

To have this disorganised jumble as if the paper Message Bible just consists of page numbers without books or chapters is unfortunate to say the least.

Nowhere in the information about the product are we informed that the organisation is so unconventional such that commentary and text are merged and there are no book delineations.

For instance, I can listen to a gospel like say 41_Mark, an epistle like 45_Romans or 66_Revelation in other Audio bibles - this product is a fantastic activity turned into a farcical mess of disorganisation - It is NOT the product I believe I paid for.

I hope it can be remedied by obtaining a better organisation of the product as a replacement or things be put in place for a possible refund, I am as it were, desperately unhappy about this product, much as I am satisfied with other products that came with my order.

Thank you for your time and understanding.

Sources

[1] The Message (Bible) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[2] Authorized King James Version - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[3] Zondervan - About Bible Translations

[4] eStudySource.com - Download Bestselling Digital Bibles & Study Tools!