bad service on the dot

My name is Sue Rosen. I look after my father’s affairs, as he suffers from dementia. My father’s name is Basil Tresidder.

I paid for his newspaper subscriptions last year on 27and 29 May. I paid R 1266.72 for his daily Citizen newspaper (ref no ***) and R 280.49 for his Saturday Citizen (ref ***).

He has not received a newspaper since 1 Feb.

I phoned the number originally supp**** on my confirmation letter, only to be told that a new company is doing deliveries of the Citizen newspapers. I was told to contact On the Dot and speak to their service center. This happened on Friday last week.

Since then, I have had to phone them 3 times to try and get my fathers Citizen newspaper delivered to him. It is now the 9th of Feb, and despite all sorts of promises (including a 1 week extension due to non delivery), my father is still not receiving his newspapers.

Problems with the On the Dot service center, include being told that the computer systems are so slow, that I should give them my fathers name and they will phone back once they find his details ( I never got a return call), a rather rude operator called Bernice, who imp**** that I should send an email to On the Dot to find out if I would get an extension to my fathers contract and promises of delivery (which never happened), and the fact that when the operators could access information eventually, the delivery details were incorrect. I then gave Bernice the correct delivery details, but when I phoned again today to complain that nothing had been delivered, it appears that the correct information that I had given to her yesterday, had never been captured.

I have now just finished on the phone with another operator in the call center, and we will now wait and see if my father gets his Citizen tomorrow or possibly even this afternoon…

I am sending you this email in order to inform you that I am more than disappointed in the break in service experienced in the delivery of the Citizen daily and Saturday newspapers for my father, and the ineffectiveness of the call center personnel dealt with until today.

For a man of 89, whose best grasp on reality, and the date and day of the week depends on the newspaper delivery, and the fact that the paper has been paid for for a year in advance – this failure to get the paper delivered to him on a daily basis is absolutely atrocious.

Just because the ‘delivery company’ has changed, should not affect the delivery of the paper, and should have been a seamless crossover.

Sincerely disappointed and incredibly angry,

Sue Rosen (on behalf of Basil Tresidder)