I received this e-mail from a friend.  It talks about Woolworths and how they cheated this other lady out of R250, supposedly.  It just seems like someone with a bad attitude in life who was obviously beaten by a big cookie monster kid at school as a child …

What do you think?

This is a true story.

Please forward when you finish reading!

A little background:

Woolworths, if you don’t know already, is a very expensive clothing and supermarket outlet (they sell a typical R50 T-shirt for R150).  My daughter and I had just finished lunch at a Woolies Cafe in Hyde Park, Johannesburg.  Because both of us are such biscuit lovers, we decided to try the ‘Woolies Cookie’.  It was so excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe.  The waitress said with a small frown, ‘I’m afraid not, but you can buy the recipe.’

I asked how much, and she responded; ‘Only two fifty – it’s a great deal’

I agreed to that, and told her to add it to my bill.

Thirty days later, I got my Visa statement, and the Woolworths charge was R485. I looked at it again, and I remembered I had only spent R49.95 for two sandwiches and about R120 for a scarf. At the bottom of the statement, it said, ‘Cookie Recipe – R250.00′. That was outrageous!

I called Woolworths Accounting Department and told them the waitress had said it was ‘two fifty’, which clearly does not mean ‘two hundred and fifty Rands’ by any reasonable interpretation of the phrase.  Woolworths refused to budge. They would not refund my money because according to them; ‘What the waitress told you is not our problem.  You have already seen the recipe.  We absolutely will not refund your money.

I explained to the Accounting Department lady the criminal statutes which govern fraud in the state of  Gauteng.  I threatened to report them to the Better Business Bureau and The Attorney General’s office.  I was basically told: Do what you want. Don’t bother thinking of how you can get even, and don’t bother trying to get any of your money back’

I said, OK, you’ve got my R250, and now I’m going to have R250 worth of fun. I told her that I was going to see to it that every cookie lover in the world with an e-mail account gets a R250 cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus for free.  She replied, ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’ I said, ‘Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you RIPPED ME OFF!’ and slammed down the phone.

So here it is! Please pass it on to everyone you can possibly think of.  I paid R250 for this, and I don’t want Woolworths to EVER make another cent from this recipe!

WOOLIES COOKIES

[Actual recipe removed to at least try and preserve Woolworths image]

PLEASE KEEP THE RECIPE AND SEND IT TO EVERY PERSON YOU KNOW WHO HAS AN E-MAIL ADDRESS!

This is not a joke-it’s a true story.

It starts off with “This is a true story“, immediately this screams to me of someone taking a situation and taking it way out of proportion and context.

Now I know for a fact that Woolworths Customer Care is outstanding, well it has been with me and I have not heard otherwise.  The conversation this lady quotes seem to have been conjoured up from her utter hatred for Woolworths, who knows why she hates them so?

And I’m sorry, but when I read the story and the Woolworths cashier says “two fifty“, I immediately thought, “R250 for a recipe?“  So how this lady, in her right mind, would think that Woolworths is willing to release a recipe for R2.50 is beyond me.  Seriously, logic clearly eludes you.

And of course the following lines immediately scream of “I want to make a name for myself, therefore I will defame somebody else“:

1. This is a true story.
2. Please forward when you finish reading!
3. PLEASE KEEP THE RECIPE AND SEND IT TO EVERY PERSON YOU KNOW WHO HAS AN E-MAIL ADDRESS!
4. This is not a joke-it’s a true story.

I LOATHE these e-mails and I cannot comprehend what drives a person to defame a company over a simply stupid item such as the way in which YOU interpret what some says.  Shame on you madam, shame on you…