Having been told by an employee at Coastal Hire that I had won a generator for hiring a submersible pump to remove the flood waters from my property, I was naturally elated. Finding the persistent load-shedding debilitating when one depends upon constant power, I had resolved to purchase a fairly sizable one to overcome this annoyance factor. As the generator would of sizable proportions being an 8 kVA, I arranged with the builder who was on site repairing all my flood damage to provide me with a quote for a generator room.

I was the most fortunate person alive as I was receiving an expensive present. Not only was it exactly what I wanted but it would save me at least R26,000.

Then the doubts started. Everybody was querying the validity of this call from an unknown person who never left a name or contact details. Maybe I had been conned. Just one word quietened  those fleeting nagging doubts as she had uttered the words that it was sponsored by Coastal Hire whom I had recently used. On a subsequent call, I was informed that delivery was the following Monday. Calm was restored. This was no fraudulent call.

Then Monday came and went. And Tuesday came & went. By Wednesday morning, I was concerned that I might have been conned. Screwed. Compounding the problem was the fact that I had no contact details. The obvious solution was to contact Coastal Hire’s Head Office which was in probability the organisers of this “promotion”. I explained to the receptionist what my problem was & she made some calls to various departments but to no avail. Everybody denied that Coastal Hire had run a promotion as this was organised at a franchisee level. The receptionist used her insight into the operation and suggested that she phone the nearest branch to my house in Roodepoort. A great deduction but totally incorrect. I had headed north, so it had to have been Randburg.

Five minutes later a very willing assistant from Randburg contacted me explaining that there was no such promotion and that if there had been he would have known about it as the staff at the various branches were a close-knit team. But he did suggest that my credit card statement would reflect the branch name on it. What the statement did state was COASTAL HIRE N. That was it. NORTHRIDING. A quick chat to Northriding branch disabused me of that being a solution. They conformed what the Randburg Branch had stated. Promotion are organised at a franchisee i.e. a branch level.

There was only one final option. Contact Head Office and speak directly to marketing. My luck was favourable. The answerer was involved in the “promotion” with Ucount but as far as she was concerned, all the items had been shipped. She did however check with Ucount for me and discovered that my generator was out for delivery today – Wednesday.

Here’s hoping and have – perhaps I will come to regret it – disabused myself of my negative emotions about mankind.  

But then I am reminder of the mafia in Eskom costing us R1bn per month.

Blaine’s reposit:

Proud dad welcomes his new son, Petrol Generator McCleland, into this world after a very late-in-life adoption to fill a void in his home.  He hopes it will be a while before Generator grows up and starts dating Lithium Ion Battery inside the house because he’s not too sure if he can deal with hybrids this late in life.  I think that he’ll be in for a shock with these modern non-binary types as a certain amount of gender fluidity is required what with Generator identifying as AC and Lithium identifying as DC.  One or the other will have to transition.  Before Dad knows it there will be a throuple playing housey housey with Inverter being the third party.  But maybe Dad will get lucky and they will have a lot of snotty nosed UPS’s which he can sell off.