From Mr J. Portelli

I feel it is my turn to let people know that some people are just plain incompetent, even though they hold a high position in their company.

Case in point is Brainbox in San Gwann. This production company had a television show called Mhux bic-Cajt back in 2005 hosted by the very capable Eileen Montesin. This programme offered a lot of prizes, and my wife and I were one of the winners of that programme in December of that year! The winning package included, among other things a weekend break to anywhere Air Malta flies, luggage and a camera. We were so thrilled to win this prize that we naturally told everybody we knew about it!

That proved to be a very big mistake because we are still waiting for the above mentioned promised gifts up to this day! On the only meeting we had with Brainbox, we were told that through some slip up and mishandling by this company, they didn’t even know we were winners and, after talking with company director Sabrina Mulligan, we were promised a really great holiday; she even included a cruise to make up for her mistakes and the mishandling of our case.

Sabrina never called us of her own volition; on the contrary we always had to push the issue, which showed a total lack of cooperation by Brainbox. Serious companies don’t operate like that.

Needless to say, this caused us much embarrassment with our families and at my place of work because Sabrina could never confirm this trip. All we got was talk, talk and more talk and promises and, as you can imagine, we feel humiliated!

I think people like that ought to be ashamed of themselves; they should not hold such a high position if they cannot deliver a couple of plane tickets in 20 months! This is a shameful abuse of our patience and good heart. It has been a year and eight months, and we are still waiting for the trip, luggage and camera we rightfully won.

When we finally received the approval letter from Brainbox and took it to the travel agency E C Travel, we were informed that this trip was for somebody else and a different television show too! This was the last straw!

I believe Brainbox owes us a big apology, and we hold it responsible for this public embarrassment it caused us. Thus compensation should follow to at least show some class. Further action must follow to stop this abuse.

Joe Portelli

PIETA