Stephen’s Scribble Pad

In 2005 I had a nasty fender bender with a BMW on the way to Pretoria. Through insurers Outsurance, North City Panelbeaters were given the job of doing the repairs. Not only was their communication with me atrocious, but their service itself was shameful. I was ill in hospital shortly after the accident and they took advantage by shelving my repair job until I insisted after a month that they get on with it. I flew back to cape town and they delivered the car via road freight. It arrived:

• without my radio-cd player
• without the right-hand front headlight globe
• with a non-functional air conditioner
• with a non-functional interior light
• with complimentary finger marks on the interior roof lining

However, what I only discovered now after my gear-box conked in was that they replaced the right-hand CV shaft with a non-standard part that was too long. This caused irregular strain on the CV Joint which eventually has cracked so now that and the shaft had to be replaced as well. If this CV had come apart while doing 120 km / hour on the N1 freeway I might have been killed.
Because I was ill at the time and lacked mobility what with a broken hip and collar bone, I did not have the luxury of inspecting their work. It seems that unscrupulous people like North City Panelbeaters  will take advantage of this and do sub-standard work, probably hoping to maximise profit from the insurance payout.

Note to self:

• always inspect your vehicle for obvious visual signs of poor workmanship
• get a written service report with a detailed breakdown
• AND COMPLAIN IF YOU’RE NOT HAPPY
• AND KEEP ON COMPLAINING UNTIL YOU ARE HAPPY

I was determined to give sentech the benefit of the doubt besides the countless complaints about their service on the net, however enough is enough!

What a wonderful experience it was to spend an unfruitful hour of my life hunting for the instructions on how to access my sentech email on-line (or, any technical instructions for anything for that matter). I have recently had issue with not receiving usage notifications (as per contract) and have been called several times today to be asked if I received a notification email that was “sent 10 minutes ago”. After supposedly resending it to me it is now 4 hours later and still no show.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only purpose for the web-site is to lure new customers into their trap and then to completely befuddle you once you become a subscriber. Our government web-sites are more user friendly and pleasant to browse than this, which amazes me as sentech is in the business of providing services that are “web-related”.

Further rants:

• Their FAQ is unclear and seems to imply that I have to pay them R 500 just to terminate my contract even after the 24 month contract period has passed? If I should dare to downgrade to a lesser package I must cough up R 200 for something that could not be more complicated than clicking on a new drop-down option on my account (the only reason I might want to downgrade is if I actually need to curtail my spending!!!).
• Their email server transmits email slower than a blade of grass would pass through a constipated tortoise!