What I anticipated as a night of light hearted fun turned to utter agony and sheer disappointment due to lack of planning and misleading marketing by Exclusive Books Montecasino. I was at the end of my thither when I picked up my handbag and stormed out of the rather boring remnants of a launch at 00:30 in the dusk of morning.

I almost wept due to sheer exhaustion and anger on Friday night as I traipsed from one end of Montecasino to another in search of an Exclusive Books assistant who didn’t try to sell me the same hogwash about the Harry Potter launch as the one before them.

You see Exclusive Books had advertised months in advance on their website and in-store that people could pre-order their books from the store and that if they did, they could be in line to win a magical trip to London to see all kinds of fantastical things thanks to the launch of the last book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I had pre-booked and paid at one of the Exclusive Books store about 5 months ago, and it was early last week that I received an email from Exclusive Books about the cool HP parties that would be taking place all around South Africa in anticipation of the big launch. For the much anticipated ‘big, exclusive’ Montecasino branch launch, there was to be huge festivities held that would only allow a certain amount of guests and people had to book online or via the telephone weeks in advance to get a place on guest list.

Here is exhibit A, said letter from Exclusive Books, confirming my place at the party. I present exhibit B, a screenshot of the message that was left for all the unlucky people that had not registered for the party on time.

Now it’s pretty hard to misunderstand all the communication I present before you, right? I mean it does say that there’s supposed to be an exclusive party happening on the 20 July 2007 which starts at 10pm at Montecasino…

Why then did the so-called ‘party’ turn out to be a free-for-all after all that stress about registering for a party? A number of disgruntled and unhappy ‘guests who had regsitered’ were told by the reps that “[they] couldn’t just limit numbers because that would be unfair” and to allay our fears, we were all told that “there’s enough books for everyone so don’t stress”.

Now this was the worst book launch I ever attended at an Exclusive Books and instead of finding out some real answers, the Mickey Mouse responses that were meant to settle us down, made us angrier and more disappointed at the lack of compassion from a book store that many are ‘fanatical’ about. Some of the parents attending the launch had driven all the way from Pretoria and Lenasia to attend the “exclusive” event and they were mortified at how “exclusively useless” the staff were at dealing with the issues at hand.

On a completely different scale though, my hats go off to the staff of Sandton’s Exclusive Books store at Nelson Mandela Square. After leaving the marauding mob at Monte, Merv and I headed in the dead of night to Sandton Square in search of my copy of HP’s final instalment.

The scene of calm excitement and anticipation of all the eager faces at that bookshop definitely did wonders for my spirit. There was refreshing hot chocolate and other goodies to eat that one could grab on the way into the store, and all the children and adults anxiously lined themselves up in an orderly fashion at the front of the store to collect their copies of the book. At exactly 1:01am, I was handed my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I made my way home straight away. Now that is good customer service.

Exclusive Books Montecasino has a lot to learn from their other branch compadres, my only wish is that they learn it fast and to no further detriment to their loyal patrons.