Johan Zeelie, Diep River
Blue Route Mall management, Redefine Property, states: “The safety of our customers, tenants and employees remains our highest priority.”
This is the biggest bull I have heard in a while. They don’t care one bit about their customers.
A while ago, my young daughter and I visited the mall. She then required the loo.
So, I took her there and waited at the entrance for her. She was barely gone when she came running to me at the end of the toilet passageway where I was waiting. I could see something was wrong. I asked what was wrong, she said there were men in the ladies.
While she was still telling me this, two men came strolling out in no rush. Laughing and chatting to each other.
They were not workmen whatsoever.
I looked around for security personnel to report it, but there was no one in sight. If I stopped the men I can bet you I would have been the one in trouble.
I then tried to report it to centre management, there was no one to listen to my complaint. I sent an email and received a response four days later.
The standard bull – we apologise for the inconvenience and will attend to it. Yea, right. I monitored this; nothing was done, still no security in the area until this day.
In general, if you go look, how many female security officers would you see in the mall?
Should the need be there for female officers, how long will you wait?
Then a second scenario to prove my statement that Blue Route Mall management doesn’t care – go to the cinema in the evening. When you leave any time between 9pm and midnight, you find only the one door on the far side is open with all the night-shift security personnel standing and sitting inside. Not one security officer in sight outside.
Now you must walk to your car through the car park – at that time of the evening, with no security personnel in sight outside.
That being said, it may be no surprise as how my security personnel do you see in the day in the outside parking and the underground parking areas? Look, to me it does not matter: I am a big dude with streetsmarts. My concern is for the young adults and even the everyday Joe who comes to grab a bite and watch a movie.
Another concern is when parents are on their way to collect their kids – the kids are not allowed to wait inside; they must go wait outside.
Now please tell me how that shows they “care” about their customers. And they can’t state they don’t know about this – the mall has cameras – use them. Centre management needs to be proactive – do surprise visits. But it’s easier to just say we apologise for your inconvenience.
I was very happy when the centre relaunched. It was a massive improvement, and we did not have to drive to Canal Walk and the like as we had an awesome new mall in our area. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way any more.
One last request, Redefine, don’t blame Covid-19 for this either.
“No customers, no mall.”
● Redefine Properties responds:
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. While we don’t have a record of the specific complaints the customer has raised, ideally, we would like to meet the customer in person to demonstrate that indeed the safety of our customers, tenants and employees is of the highest priority.
We would be happy to report back following our meeting.