The Sweet Service Award goes to Due-South craft route shop in Franschhoek, a little ‘David’ (Jan Coetzee is the owner) who did not give in to the demand of ‘Goliath’ Foschini Group to change its brand name, given that the retail chain has 21 Due South stores throughout the country, reported Business Day. Due-South promotes local crafts and publishes travel guides listing crafters and cultural tourism points. Due South is a series of camping stores which one could say operate in opposition to  Cape Union Mart.  The Foschini Group’s appeal was dismissed by the court this week, on the grounds that Due-South products are not the same or similar to those stocked in Due South!.

The Sour Service Award goes to Deukom, and its Manager Gabriele Carstens, for her communication after a (unannounced to customers) maintenance outage of its German TV programmes.  An sms to an after-hours service was only answered by telephone call the following day, when the service had been restored. The request for a refund of the full evening’s viewing time which was lost was rudely rejected by the Deukom representative. This led to a chain of e-mails from Ms Carstens, in defensive mode, quoting a clause in the contract which covers them against such outages, and the resultant financial liability.  There was no apology from her for the inconvenience.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

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