Faye’s gay day
It’s good to know that during the month of St Valentine, there is at least one operator with a heart. I learned this from Faye of Chobham Travel who recently had 50,000 Fairbank notes stolen.
Faye, who had been saving the vouchers that Gold Medal give after a booking, had been squirrelling them away in the top drawer of her desk until she had enough to entitle her to a holiday.
Imagine her horror, and that of her colleagues, when they arrived at work one morning to find that the agency had been raided.
Travel agencies would seem to me to be unlikely targets for such a crime, having no stock of real value – after all, who would make off with half a tonne of brochures unless he were an over-enthusiastic recycler on a mission – and generally speaking no cash on the premises unless you count the charity tins.
Indeed the perpetrators of this crime couldn’t find much to steal other than the photocopier, which was later recovered from a local pond, and Faye’s Fairbank notes.
Naturally, Faye was devastated at the loss of the vouchers she had painstakingly collected for such a very long time and the thought of having to startcollecting them all over again brought tears to her eyes.
She immediately telephoned Gold Medal to advise them of the theft of the vouchers but it seemed there was little that could be done.
However, when desk supervisor Michelle Travis heard of Faye’s disappointment she cut through all red tape, informed Argos of the incident and replaced the lost vouchers to the delight of a grateful Faye.
Suddenly her grey day had become a positively golden one.
Family feuds
I think the time has come to ask the offspring of aged parents to sign booking forms just as we do for the under-18s. This thought came to mind following the visit of the son of an elderly lady who had booked a flight to Spain with Kate.
Entering the shop with a face like thunder, he announced his disapproval at his mother’s intended holiday. In spite of the fact that the lady in question, who is over 70, is a regular customer and travels every year to visit her daughter and son-in-law in Spain, he felt that she had been pressurised into booking the flight. He forbade us to take cheques or any other form of payment from her in future and also declared his intention to cancel her flight booking.
Just as soon as it was possible to get a word in edgeways, it was explained that Kate had spent a considerable length of time with the old lady on the booking in question as she had originally wanted to fly from Bournemouth and stay in Spain for 10 days. She had taken printouts from various airports home to peruse and had returned some days later, cheque book in hand, to book a flight from Bristol.
We found her son’s attitude frankly patronising; his mother is a sharp-witted woman who clearly knows her own mind. At the time of booking, she had even shown Kate a letter from her son-in-law suggesting dates when she might visit them. We came to the conclusion that there must be some bad blood between the siblings but this was little consolation to Kate who had become piggy in the middle.
It is our fervent hope that the old lady spends all her money now, preferably on flights to Spain, so there’s nothing left for the children to fight over later!
Dreams can come true
One of the nicest things about being a travel agent is that one can have a hand in the realisation of clients’ dreams and aspirations.
Two clients asked me to make their dreams come true this week; one young man wanted me to find him a cheap seat to Antigua as he is set to skipper a yacht in the Antigua yacht races while another wanted me to fly him and his girlfriend out to the Maldives where he intended to propose to her.
The cheap seat did not pose too much of a problem and, with a little juggling of dates and a promise from the client to live on lentils until departure, we had one dream in the bag.
The second request, however, is causing real grief. Flights to the Maldives are there but affordable accommodation is proving more elusive. The client can only manage the price of a standard room; unfortunately there are no standard rooms available for the foreseeable future.
Kelly at Sunset Faraway was the only one able to offer the package at the right price and, knowing what this millennium Romeo had in mind, has tried desperately to get the room, faxing, e-mailing and telephoning, sadly to no avail.
We agreed that the course of true love never did run smooth but we are both still determined to overcome this hiccup in the hope that love will conquer all.
Romance costs
Misinterpretation is the name of the game where some clients are concerned. Take the woman who recently requested a two-night stay in a West Country hotel selected from the Rainbow brochure.
The accommodation was available and I relayed the price to the client over the phone.
“No, that’s not right,” she said bluntly.
I checked that we were both looking at the same page in the brochure and quoted the total price for two people for two nights.
“No, dear, underneath that panel it says £280 for two nights, not the £340 you’re quoting,” she said authoritatively.
I scrutinised the price grid and found that it had a little heart beside it, denoting that it was a romantic break and that the price was £280 per person, totalling £560 for the couple, as opposed to the cheaper option I had rightly quoted. I explained that the panel she was looking at gave prices for the romantic break and was in fact more expensive.
“What extras do you get for your money?”
“An up-graded room, flowers, champagne and chocolates,” I replied.
“For that sort of money I’d want the romantic partner thrown in too!” she laughed.