Welcome to planet earth
As agents, we often hear the question ‘where can I go?’ But we are rarely asked ‘Where am I ?’ This however, was the question on the drink-sodden lips of a chap who unwittingly found himself in our shop.
Standing there, grey skinned and with the sort of stubble that looks good on George Michael but which served only to make this chap look like Fred Flintstone, he was a pitiful sight.
He repeated his question, and Jules, who felt sure the man was joking, replied: “Planet earth.” He looked so worried at this remark that I realised as I approached him, that he was still drunk. Standing by him, Iwas hit by the smell of stale alcohol.
“You’re in Gillingham in Dorset,” I said. He groaned loudly.
“I’ve got to get back to York!” he wailed, “I’m getting married tomorrow!”
As he searched through a wallet that had clearly been stripped of its contents, including his credit cards, one could clearly see the panic setting in.
The unfortunate bridegroom told us he was the unwilling victim of his best man and friends who had organised a stag night to remember, only in this case, he couldn’t. Delving into his trouser pocket he retrieved £5 and sat down to consider how to use it.
His mates at the army base in Blandford had thoughtfully abandoned him in a town with a railway station (you’d be surprised how few there are in this region), but there was no way that a fiver was going to buy him a ticket to York.
Eventually he decided to spend the cash in the supermarket on ‘a bottle to steady the nerves’ and use the change to phone his father to come and rescue him. Thus was our civic duty discharged. Nice to know the public perceive us as a caring industry. We felt a bit like a drop-in centre.
Cash in hand?
Please let’s introduce lie detectors for use with clients who claim to have full payment readily to hand to book!
Thanks to technology we no longer need to pick up the telephone to quote up-to-the-minute prices for long-haul destinations, but there are occasions when one is obliged to ring airlines or consolidators and one only does so when the booking appears to be genuine.
‘Able to pay immediately’ is a phrase which is being too broadly interpreted by clients; some take it to mean ‘Immediately I ring up my bank/nip home/pop to my husband’s workplace/shake out the cash from the shoe box under Granny’s bed’ and so on. However, one client this week teased out a whole new meaning for the phrase.
With everything in place for a last-minute flight to Australia for the client and her partner with special needs, I requested payment.
“Oh, I’m waiting on a cheque from the insurance company. I had a car accident a while ago and my solicitor thinks we have a good case so I’ll be alright for money!”
Music to my ears
While I very much like the ballad ‘If it Takes Forever I Will Wait For You’, I was surprised to hear it played when I’d been put on hold, waiting to be put through to Cathay Pacific reservations staff.
Fortunately I didn’t have to wait for long and my request for skycots was dealt with by a friendly and efficient member of the team. Cathay were, as the song suggested, worth waiting for. I could name some operators for whom the song ‘I Will Survive’ might be more fitting.
Money for nothing
Some of you may recall that years ago a direct-sell company set itself up in business offering cheap and cheerful holidays.
Recognising that many of the consumers they were targeting would probably never have been abroad before, the company liased with hoteliers and produced pictures of the meals that would be on offer with the foreign name of the dish alongside.
One of my clients, enamoured of the lower-priced product, drifted away from our agency in Romford and booked with this company.
Following her holiday, she returned to us to book the next, telling us she felt ‘like an idiot’ having to point at a picture of a fried egg on a laminated board, “Plus,” she said. “I had to draw a bottle of brown sauce to go with it!”
This memory was resurrected for me when talking to a client who had recently returned from his holiday aggrieved that he had been cheated out of a meal!
He had been advised that, because of a change in the time of departure, a meal would not be served on the aircraft. He accepted £5 in respect of this.
The delay in departure meant that he arrived in resort at 12.45 in the morning, long after the hotel had stopped serving dinner. His argument with the operator is that he paid for seven nights’ half-board, but only got six nights.
I don’t know how operators work out the cost of one meal but I suggested that the amount due back would be too small to be worth upsetting himself. “It probably wouldn’t amount to more than a fiver, after all,” I said in what I thought was a placatory manner.
“If the meals only work out at a fiver a head, they owe me a helluva lot more!” he exclaimed.
Seeing myself in a no-win situation I recommended he put his complaint in writing.
Home sweet home
As you’re sitting at your screen with clients wanting late availability and growing ever more despondent, you could offer them the cheery news that going away might not be as good for them as they think.
Medical studies have proved that people newly returned from holiday suffer a depression that would not have occurred had they not left their homes in the first place. So forget all that business about the need to get away to the sun to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder and other British winter-related blues; nobody needs a holiday after all. Will you tell the clients, or will I?