Active since Sep 2016
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31 reviews4 months ago
Very disappointing experiences at Claremont branch
I have had a few mildly disappointing experiences with Paul Bothner over the years, but have never left bad feedback. I can only imagine how tough it could be to run a musical supplies business, in a fragile economy and in this day and age - so I have been quite happy to give them some latitude. But very recent experiences have motivated today's negative feedback. My local branch is Claremont, Cape Town. Toms in the centre of Cape Town closed down (a superior destination in my opinion) and there are hardly any music shops left, so Claremont is where I go, if I really need to. I called them recently about some strings that were displayed on their website, to see if they had them in the gauge that I use. I was told somebody would call me back, but he didn't. So I chased the following day and was told he was still waiting for a reply. He never got back to me with a conclusive answer - so I have to assume that either he gave up, or that the answer was no......and he got busy with something else. Nonetheless, please don't promise to call a customer back and fail to do so – it is definitely less than satisfactory service. Then today I went into the shop to buy two single strings to replace strings that are broken on a couple of my guitars (nothing to do with the strings I was looking for in the previous episode). I was very clear in my request for a top 1st E string and a 5th 'A' string. Anybody who's ever played guitar for longer than a month, or who works in a music shop, knows (or should know) that the top E string only means one thing – it is the thin, highest pitched string. What I was presented with by this shop assistant was a bottom (thick) E string - and when I told him that this was the opposite of what I wanted, he tried to argue with me and gave me a less than customer-friendly look. Unbelievable. He then took ages to find the top 'E' string, but when he did, he couldn't find the product code and therefore it couldn't be priced. Bothners has a weird system whereby you can't pay for the product at the normal front desk, you have to go to a separate cashier, which is what he then did in the hope that she would have the product code.....but she didn't. Thus we were stuck. Meanwhile, he had failed to find a single 5th 'A' string in the shop. The staff were unwilling to break into a whole set of strings to find the item. By this stage, I had run out of time and realised in any case that I would have to visit another music shop in order to find both strings. So I aborted, realising that I was having my time wasted. Before I left, I asked for pick that I have often bought in this shop in the past - an Ultex/Dunlop Jazz III. No stock - and no idea if any would be coming in. The whole experience from top to bottom was really poor. None of the products I was asking for were in any way unusual or exotic. The fact that the shop assistant didn't even know what a top 1st 'E' string was is beyond a joke. A customer shouldn't have to correct you on something as basic as knowing the difference between the top and bottom strings on a guitar!! If you want people to come to your shop and spend their money, at least sort yourselves out and act like professionals.
53 replies
4 months ago
The new website is a disaster. Please sort it out!!
The 'revamped' website is a disaster. Spinning wheels......information lag......banners that don't move etc. I don't have an account with Ithuba and I don't need one, but I do rely on the website to check the current status of games and also historical results. The old website was run efficiently and it was easy for me to see these two features. The new one........absolute *******. How could it be possible to ruin something that was already working perfectly well? Have the new owners deliberately hired amateur idiots to do the makeover?!? What was wrong with the old website anyway? It is pathetic really - especially in this day and age. Ithuba should be ashamed.
53 replies
4 months ago
Shockingly bad experience with their online & telephone 'customer services'.
Since Woolworth 'upgraded' their loyalty cards and programme, I have had constant problems with the app. Despite numerous attempts to get support and a fix at in-store customer services, no one seems equipped to assist. I then resorted to their telephone helpline - couldn't get through to a human being, despite trying 3 times. Lastly, I pinged them on social media (X) and they rep**** quickly. They suggested some basic measures which didn't work, then promised an escalation to tech support. That was 10 days ago. Tech Support made 1 attempt to call me, at a time when I couldn't take the call - they emailed me and I responded at once, inviting them to call back. Despite this and several more attempts to contact them via X, nothing. My rewards are effectively 'frozen' in the app, which doesn't work. This is really shabby and not worthy of the title "customer service". For the prices Woolworth charges, they should sort out their support systems. I'm not impressed.
0 replies
21 months ago
Buyer Beware!! Poor support from iStore - buy elsewhere
Buyer Beware: having done a lot of research on the best products in the market, I bought a Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD hard drive to back up my Mac, from an iStore in Cape Town. The product packaging advertised a 5 year warranty. I paid R3000 for it - and on the till slip, iStore printed the advice "....refer to the product packaging for warranty information..." or words to that effect. So, I walked away feeling fairly confident that I had bought the right thing, with sufficient peace of mind that it would keep my info safe for the next 5 years. Fast forward 2 years: the product had been used by me probably only once every 2 months on average since purchase, purely to back up my Mac, after which it was carefully placed back in its original packaging and stored in a drawer in a desk. It still looked brand new. However, in the middle of a back up, it suddenly stopped working. Nothing could bring it to life and after taking both the diagnostic steps recommended on the manufacturer's website and then having it checked in iStore, it was confirmed that the product was no longer functioning. However....iStore simply told me that their store warranty only lasts 1 year - and that I must deal with the manufacturer directly. In other words, they didn't want anything more to do with it!! They then told me that I could contact their distributor - who were not helpful and couldn't be less interested. It took a long time for me to navigate to the correct channels and the conclusion was that I eventually got through to the manufacturer and had to send it back to the Czech Republic (!), at my own considerable expense, whereupon they would check it and replace or repair. The postage alone was around R1000!! Then the other day I went to another Apple specialist reseller in Cape Town (Digicape), who sell the same SanDisk products. They told me categorically that if I had bought the product from them, their policy is to cover all warranty issues under the manufacturer's 5 year warranty, at no cost to the customer. What a difference. In conclusion, save yourself a lot of hassle and a fair amount of money and buy from a retailer with a proper, meaningful customer support policy. Don't buy from iStore.
0 replies
25 months ago
Bad service from Cavendish branch
Hi - we had very bad service from the Cavendish (Claremont) branch last night. We ordered 4 dishes to be delivered via Mr D delivery and we specified very clearly in the instructions that the Bolognese pasta should have no cheese on it, as one of my children is allergic. The food arrived - and the pasta was covered in cheese!! The manager at the branch was very unhelpful when we brought this to his attention, almost making it appear as though the fault was on our side. He kept my wife on the phone for ages, offering no solution whatsoever and behaving in an unsympathetic and unprofessional manner. Meanwhile, the rest of our food was getting cold and our family supper was ruined, leaving my child hungry with nothing to eat and all of us angry at the way we had been treated. We have been regular eat-in customers of the Camps Bay branch for a few years and have never had bad service like this before. I am waiting for a resolution, having spent R653 on what was a wasted and frustrating experience.
0 replies
25 months ago
Slick marketing, many promises.....but a failure to deliver adequate service
Rain South Africa makes all sorts of promises but fails to deliver. We have experienced problems since we started with Rain. Firstly, the router box they supp**** failed to fit our UPS cables, which were fine with 2 different sets of Telkom routers. The cables look the same, yet when plugged into the Rain box, they are slightly loose and no power is transmitted. This now means that the UPS we bought specifically to keep the internet working during load shedding can no longer do its job, because of a non-standard socket in the Rain 101 box. Secondly, we have had persistent internet outages with Rain in our area of Cape Town over the last 5 days, which were fixed for 2 days but have now returned. Rain "customer service" knowledge of these problems is patchy at best, meaning we don't really know what is going on. Also there seems to be no "service monitoring" page we can follow with outage information. Moreover, Rain takes a long time to answer customer service concners. Meanwhile, to cover for Rain outages, we are spending a fortune on mobile data top-ups with no compensation for Rain. Despite its detractors, Telkom offered us much quicker customer support and repair and pretty good service over the last few years. We are thinking of returning to them at the earliest opportunity, as Rain is not working out well so far. We need reliability and consistency - and prompt, knowledgeable support. Plus, we are paying for a service - if Rain doesn't deliver what we pay for, then Rain should compensate us.
106 replies
33 months ago
Very poor quality blender attachments with serious design flaw
Bought a stick blender and also a combined electric whisk/blender, both made by Bosch. At first glance these were good products, however.....both the stick blender attachments broke really easily, in the same place. They both (blender attachments) fit into a hole in the main body of each alliance, via a fixed white plastic sleeve which breaks incredibly easily. In our case, each blender attachment was dropped from a very low height onto a tiled kitchen floor, causing the white plastic sleeves to break. Once broken, they no longer fit into the hole in each respective appliance body. When contacting the retailer (Hirsch - who were as helpful as they could be), it was explained to us that to replace the attachment on its own would cost.....more than the entire appliance (body, attachments and all) had cost in the first place!! This is utterly ridiculous. We are now left with two appliances, one of which is useless, the other of which is only good as an electric whisk. The weak plastic sleeve on each blender attachment is a MASSIVE design flaw - I have never known anything to break and become redundant so easily and we now feel that we have totally wasted our money in choosing Bosch for these appliances. I would like some feedback on this please - we can't be the only ones for whom this has turned out to be a buying mistake.
0 replies
33 months ago
Extremely poor service regarding a faulty product
I bought an (expensive) Egyptian cotton Queen duvet cover, the size was clearly marked on the bag it came in and the label on the cover itself says "Queen". As it turned out when I got it home, it is 10cm too short on one side, so it doesn't fit my duvet. I would have thought that this elementary fault could have been picked up by quality control.....but maybe such a thing doesn't exist here. I called the shop and was promised a call back with a solution within half an hour. That was this morning at around 09:45. It's now 4 hours later, I've called back twice & been put on hold trying to get through to someone who can assist - nothing. This is really poor customer service. I am 30 mins drive from the shop, so it's a real hassle when the product paid for is not what was advertised. I hope there is an @Home rep reading this who can get things moving, otherwise this business will not see my custom ever again.
480 replies
42 months ago
Appalling and discriminatory mess up from Woolies
Idiotic mess up from Woolies. They advertised a voucher for new members of W Cellar (R75 off minimum spend of R200) in one of their magazines. I scanned the QR code on my phone and filled in my details on the form on my screen, then sent it off. A few days passed, I never received any acknowledgment from Woolies for my membership entry and there was no voucher in my Woolies app. So I asked a couple of managers in-store next time I went shopping, but no one seemed to have a clue. Then I asked Woolies on their Twitter page.....and after a day or so got the reply: "As per the Ts&Cs, you need to have a SA ID to enter", followed by a link which didn't lead to said Ts&Cs. So I found the Ts&Cs myself, here: https://www.woolworths.co.za/corporate/cmp210631 - and there is no mention of having to have a SA ID, merely the need to have a reward card and be resident in SA, both of which conditions apply to me. I have lived here full time for nearly 7 years and been a Woolies Reward Card member for around 6 years. Moreover, how would it be sensible, logical or fair to discriminate against "valuable" customers simply because they were born somewhere else or don't happen to have a SA ID?!? I've never been excluded from promotions before on that basis. Not only is it wrong, it's discriminatory - and exactly the kind of thing which makes a loyal customer vote with his/her feet. Kiss good bye to my R30k/year spend.
0 replies
43 months ago
Buyer beware is an understatement - please don't put yourself through what I have
Be very, very careful. I bought a new iPhone 13 from them late last year. It worked fine for several months....then I couldn't understand why it suddenly wouldn't connect to my network a week ago. After several days of investigation starting with my network Vodacom, then Apple Support, then MTN and being passed from pillar to post, I learned today that I am now partially involved in a fraud case!! It turns out that my legitimately owned and paid-for 'phone was acquired originally by a fraudster who obtained this then reneged on their contract with MTN - a company I have never had any dealings with. The Tec Shop must have acquired it from said individual or someone else who buys (without checking) on the grey market. The end result is that MTN has blacklisted my 'phone a week ago, so I can't use it: no calls, no mobile data, no texts. The negative effect on my business and family life is huge, as I am dependent on this 'phone , for which I paid the Tec Shop over R15,000. They have pretty much sold me a stolen 'phone, at least that is how MTN seems to be viewing it. The Tec Shop promised a solution, but won't be specific on what that is and also want me to come all the way to them, which is a 3 to 4 hour chunk out of my working day. Moreover, even if they were able to replace my 'phone with an exact replacement, this might happen all over again in a few weeks/months. This is a disgrace - and the drama and loss of income caused, not to mention the inconvenience, is huge. Avoid these people, it's not worth the hassle just to save a few bucks on buying direct from Apple or your network.
266 replies
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5 Star
1 (3.225806451612903%)
4 Star
0 (0%)
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0 (0%)
2 Star
4 (12.903225806451612%)
1 Star
26 (83.87096774193549%)