The Westfield saga ends

I received the following email on Wednesday:

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Hi there,

We have decided not to be apart of the Chatswood website as we have a Westfield Chatswood website which is more strategically aligned to us.

Thank you for considering us and Good Luck with the website.

Kind Regards,
Jessie.
JESSICA KERY │Marketing Executive│Westfield Chatswood

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I replied promptly with:

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Dear Jessica,

The request that I sent last month did not invite Westfield to be a part of Chatswood.com.au - if that is what you believed, I am afraid you have misunderstood. Chatswood.com.au is a website that covers the businesses and services in the Chatswood community. The role that the Westfield Shopping Centre plays in the Chatswood community is significant, therefore imperative to cover despite what Westfield centre management wants to control. As I mentioned in a previous email, I am happy to provide a link to Westfield's website when we do cover Westfield, that is not a problem.

My request concerned the information that you told me at our meeting, that your policy stated that, should we wish to photograph any of the store in Chatswood Westfield, we would need permission from the store owners AND a permit from Westfield centre management. As I wished to act by your policy, I requested both a copy of your policy and a permit application, neither of which you have been able to produce in the intervening six weeks.

In your last email you directly stated that a permit did not exist. I have been more than patient with waiting for this fictional permit to appear. Therefore I leave it to you to decide whether Westfield Chatswood does have a policy on photography in the centre and a corresponding permit or not.

If you did not want us to photograph in the centre at all, you should have said so directly and we would have found alternative arrangements. You should not have told us that we needed to apply for a permit due to a policy that you have deliberately made inaccessible. We are happy to find image alternatives, but I find your red tape runaround a waste of our time and yours.

Regards,
[Dr Witmol]

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On Friday I received a call from Jessie to the effect of "I believe you have misunderstood us, we are not trying to 'red tape' you". She actually used 'red tape' as a verb, which I added to my plummeting regard of her, following her badly written email (that stated that Westfield did not want to be "apart" of Chatswood.com.au, so clearly, I thought, that meant they wanted to be together with us).

Anyway, the deal is that to attain approval to take photographs, I will need to go to each store owner (or appropriate store authority in the case of chain stores) and obtain their approval to take photos of their store, THEN go to the Westfield centre manager or marketing manager to obtain approval for being allowed to take photos in the centre. Which is what she said initially (ie more than six weeks ago) but she said I needed a PERMIT to do so due to their POLICY. But, as I've documented here, there is no permit nor policy.

Besides which, she said that the marketing manager won't give approval considering she doesn't like the Chatswood.com.au site (she said the review of the food court was "negative" despite admitting that we can write whatever we like). Which is stopping us from taking photos through bureaucracy! Is that not 'red tape'-ing us?

Well, Ness is the food writer and she's still at large, taking pictures. Now that I work full time, I can only go to Chatswood on the weekend, which is too busy to take photos anyway and I've activated plan B which is to use alternative images (like, if I wanted to take a pic of Subway, I'll buy a sub and take it outside the centre and take a photo of it and use that, for example).

Westfield are just being bully boys and overprotective of their brand. Do they really think that we are powerful enough to dissuade people from shopping or eating there? But I tell you what, I like being a thorn in the side of this Jessie girl because I'm totally stretching her with my self-righteousness. Oh well, tis over now.

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Not much other news, except that things have gotten quite tight at work in terms of trying to nail people for interviews. The AIPM mag is proving a bit of trouble because it doesn't have a big print run and therefore needs further recognition to help it move along in the right circles.

Um, what else? I went to the Sydney String Centre and had my violin looked at. They did a basic polish and fixed the bridge warp for $35. Unfortunately, I decided to buy a new bow (the basic bows are $55 whereas a bow rehair is $90!) and a new set of strings ($45) and two Suzuki CDs ($30 each), which meant I ended up spending $195. So I'd better start playing again, hey...

The pledge to tackle my "to do" list is going okay but not great - things are taking longer than I thought they would but at least I'm sticking to it thus far. That's about it.