Soooooo, totally got bored with the long story that was Belgium. Basically got to Dover and drove on the donut to the car rental place that I had seen on our way out (thankfully) to see if I could switch cars. The place was "open" 24 hours, but only by appointment and you were supposed to call the number on the door, but it was an 0800 number (which are usually based anywhere but England).
Peeked in the door and saw that there was actually someone in there! What luck!...Or so we thought.....
I will condense this into a short version as I have lots of other stuff to write about.
British customer service SUCKS. I blame the brainwashing that Slaveway put me (and most of you) through for my apparently ridiculous high standards. After about 8 phone calls...okay, I'm exaggerating....6 phone calls between the car rental place, the tire (or tyre, in England) place and the road recovery I was basically told...Meh, you should be fine....Drive on the donut...Sorry, what!? When I asked one of the people at the car rental call centre, if I was your relative, sister, daughter, whatever, would you tell them the same thing? The woman on the phone finally saw it from my point of view and said we'll sort something out for you. Yay! Replacement car! Jim (guy in the shop) got really stressed and tried to figure out what car to give finally found one and I thanked him profusely and was ready to be on our way...oh...what? You don't have an automatic? Back to square one.....sigh.
LOOOOOONG story and THREE HOURS LATER we were safely on the back of a flatbed (well, the car was anyway) and we were on our way back to Gatwick with...Matt? I can't remember now, the flatbed driver. Pulled into Gatwick at about 1.30am and checked the car back in and then remembered that we hadn't filled the tank.....And he made us fill it up! Back in the car, found a petrol station and FINALLY was shut of the place. Get into the terminal and see that we had missed the train by THREE minutes and now had to wait 56 for the next one. I think that's where Katherine and I lost it a little. The wait is blurry, but I remember a lot of tired shennanigans and A LOT of whining (not just by me!). Got on the train where the conductor came by (we thought to ask for our tickets, but no, it was to ask if we could see anything on the side of his face because someone had just spit, that's right, SPIT at him. Gotta love drunk Brits at 3am.
All in all, would do it again. It was a blast, and Katherine and I still talk about the things we did that day....Maybe with less hitting of passport offices though....
When I got back I wrote a scathing email to the customer service department and ended up getting £30 back for the ordeal, even that took three phone calls and six emails. The moral of the story is don't rent from EuropCar and ALWAYS get insurance.
No comments:
Post a Comment