Hello,

It has been more than one week since I sent his formal complaint, and one month (!) since we had our disappointing experience with Whale Cottage in Franschoek.

I still await your reply,

Regards

Gustaf

Dear Madame,

I write to you to express my deep concern about the quality of the service that we experienced during our stay at the Whale Cottage in Franchoek. I addressed these issues with the local manager, as well as left several voice mails on your mobile phone but still have not heard back.

We – a party of 6 people – arrived for our stay Sunday 28 December. We were asked to pay in advance for our 3 rooms, ie without having seen the rooms first. As your establishment is rated 4 stars and as there was a local manager on duty this was acceptable to us.

While the 3 rooms were nicely furbished and in good condition there were serious issues with the cleaning.

- The garden room was barely cleaned: dirty on the floor from weeks of not being cleaned, bathroom not properly wiped down, and toilet not flushed
- The two rooms in the main building had both very dirty floors, and hair and other extremities in the bathroom. The towels in the two rooms had not been changed, and smelled like old sweat. 

When asked the manager provided clean towels, and promised to clean up the rooms immediately. We did get the new towels, but only a quick cleaning of the rooms by a cleaner who went around mumbling and cursing that she “cleaned these damn rooms before”. I again asked them to be cleaned again, and the manager promised to have them clean by the time we returned from our dinner later that night. We got back at 23:00 in the evening, the rooms had not been touched. 

The morning after I addressed this with the manager again. I showed her again the dirty rooms, but she insisted that they were already cleaned and would not apologize. I asked her how come they are dirty, but the only response was that they had been cleaned. 

I then asked that we jointly give you a call to straighten this out, but was told that we could not reach you. Frustrated I gave up trying, documented with both pictures and with a film the condition of the rooms and then checked out.

Staying at guesthouses we don’t expect 5* hotel service, but charming small establishments with personal service. We do expect clean rooms and to be treated as paying customers.

It is very unfortunate that The Whale Cottage in Franchoek does not live up to the good reputation of the Whale Cottage group. I look forward to hearing from you with an explaination on what went wrong and would be happy to share pictures and movies with you if requested.

Kind Regards

Gustaf Redin