Posts tagged South Africa

4 years old already! Time does fly.

Happy birthday, little man!

I don’t like to get medieval, unless I’m convinced that I’ve exhausted all avenues. My latest experience with Digital Planet has left me fuming, frustrated and certain that I’ll never purchase anything from them again.

This rant has nothing to do with the fact that the telephonic placing of an order for a Creative ZEN over the telephone was unpleasant. It has nothing to do with the fact that, even after explaining numerous times that the ZEN I wanted was the latest one, 4GB with SD card slot as featured in the February edition of SACM, they still got it wrong and presented a different unit upon collection. My rant also has little to do with the fact that they apologized for their mistake and immediately issued a credit voucher. Said credit voucher to be internally converted to a reversal of the charge for the unwanted item on my credit card. So, it has nothing to do with all these things. My rant has to do with the fact that it’s taken a month, and I’ve only now heard that the money will be refunded. That wouldn’t even be so bad if I had left them to their own devices. Instead, I followed-up telephonically at least four times, each time having to listen to their voice prompt indicating that phone calls are recorded for my protection. On at least one occasion I provided banking details and was assured that the refund would be completed immediately. Of course, nothing happened. One friendly reminder to the boss@digitalplanet.co.za seems never to have been read. My ALL UPPERCASE, SHOUTING AND RANTING email of 07:00 this morning still hasn’t returned a read receipt. And the assurance of a refund at 14:00 this afternoon has resulted in a call about fifteen minutes ago indicating their apology that there had been some miscommunication and that I would find a reversal of the charge on my credit card statement.

This leads me to a number of conclusions: the backoffice at this organization is severely disorganized. Even worse, they have a propensity to promise things, but never follow-up or deliver. Worse still, they lie. Contact details may as well not be provided on the website, as no one seems interested in reading, let alone responding to any correspondence. The net result is that I won’t utilize their service. I recommend you consider your choice of vendor carefully, too. We keep quiet far too often as consumers, letting shoddy service harm only ourselves and never the organization intent on providing it.

If you have a chance, get to the Chief Directorate of Surveys and Mapping in Cape Town. Mowbray, in Rhodes Avenue, to be precise. Or visit them on the web. For just ZAR 210, I acquired a set of ten DVD‘s containing raster and vector maps of the entire country in scales of 1:50000 and 1:250000. A nice resource to have. The maps remind me of those I spent a significant time studying and measuring in high school geography!

The CD:SM also supplies various aerial photographs spanning through history and laminated maps in many different versions and scales. If you have an interest in mapping, this might be for you. You may order online, too. For a government department, the CD:SM is highly efficient, friendly and knowledgeable. A personal visit is an experience, especially if you have the time to browse through their archives.