Letter from a Weltevreden Park resident

I am a member of the Devon Valley Resident Association and we are currently trying to get as many members in our area to join as possible as the crime rate is steadily increasing.

I therefore compiled a Newsletter, sent it out to most residents. Then I embarked on gathering information of all businesses in the area – namely Palm Court Shopping Centre, Devon Valley Shopping Centre, and Savannah Office Park.

I sent these businesses an email asking them if they would be interested in receiving our Newsletter to inform them of all the initiatives run in their area as well as monthly crime briefs.

One of these companies was Greyspace – T\A Creative Minds Roodepoort run by Derek Van Zyl. Mr Van Zyl deleted my email without reading it so I was curious to find out why he was not interested and called him. What a mistake!

Mr Van Zyl must be the rudest most obnoxious person I have ever dealt with. I asked why he did not want to receive our Newsletter and he responded with “I don’t have time for this sh**” and put the phone down on me. I was quite taken a back so I sent him another email and got “F*** off” as a response.

I am not sure if this is a very professional way of dealing with these kinds of issues. When I receive calls from marketing companies and even though they are irritating and waste time I never speak to them in a derogatory tone or use offensive language.

I would like to appeal to anyone in the area looking to do a Pastel course to definitely take a closer look at this business prior to making a decision to attend since Mr Van Zyl does not seem to be very professional.