Review: Cooking tour with Marlene Van Der Westhuizen (Charroux)
This entry doesn’t really belong here I know. I wanted to post this review of Marlene Van Der Westhuizen’s Cook’s Tour on Tripadvisor, but sadly they don’t allow reviews of multi-day experiences and so my review was not approved. I am posting it here in the hope that it prevents other people from wasting a whole lot of money on what should be a “once in a lifetime” experience. It isn’t. It falls short in many ways.
If you have Googled Ms V D Westhuizen’s offering you will most likely have ended up on one of a handful of posts about it as she doesn’t seem to have a website of her own. You will most probably have read this or that – 2 positive, glowing posts that really blow smoke up her arse. After spending 2,500 Euros each on this experience I wish we had dined on home-made cassoulet with the neighbour, drunk Stellenzicht wine, gone snail “hunting” or learnt something about cooking. It seems things have certainly changed since these posts were written.
So without further ado here is what I thought about this “cook’s tour”…
I can’t tell you
I had a rather frustrating, and completely fruitless, conversation with a customer service person today on the phone. Unfortunately, as entertaining as this conversation may have been for you to read, I cannot share it with you. According to the law here it is illegal to “name and shame” companies that give bad customer service, in fact not only is it illegal but you can be prosecuted for libel and go to jail (I would guess HelloPeter is probably not eyeing the Middle East as his next target – more’s the pity).
[don’t criticise please]
Perhaps even discussing this law would be a bad idea, so all I can say on this matter is that had a very pointless conversation with a customer “service” representative and then I gave up in disgust, hanging up on the person I was trying to speak to. I am not proud of this behaviour, but it was either that, or swear at the individual. I chose, I think, the lesser of the two evils.
My mounting irritation, and my mood in general, was not helped in any way by the horrible weather today, extremely hot and sticky with 85% humidity.
I hope your National Women’s Day (in South Africa in any case) was good.
See you soon.
image source: CanStock Photo