Warming Up

Saturday 21st May 2016

4918/17838

We’re going to Cornwall with a friend so my car isn’t big enough for us and all our luggage so a month or so ago I arranged to hire a people carrier from Enterprise. The man I had talked to had asked me if I wanted to be picked up on the day to be taken to get the car. That sounded good.

This morning I was waiting to be collected, but needed to know if my wife had to come in if she was going to be put on the insurance. So I called up and was on hold for a while where a voice kept on saying, “Enterprise: We pick you up”. They were very proud of their service clearly. “I know,” I told the automated voice, “You’re picking me up.” I heard them say it at least five times. I didn’t respond every time. I am not mental.

When I got through I asked about the insurance and when they would be coming to pick me up. The man seemed a bit panicked and put me on hold. A minute or so later he came back to tell me that I wasn’t down to be picked up on the system. So all the automated showing off was for nothing. They acknowledged it was their mistake but asked if I could get a cab in and they would reimburse me. To be honest I didn’t really care about being picked up anyway. So I walked in and gave them an old cab receipt. Little Richy Herring was £12.50 up, plus had burned some calories.

The staff at Enterprise were very friendly. I asked about my wife’s insurance and whether I could just do it on select days, but I wasn’t allowed. But then the manager said I could have it for free because of the whole pick-up mix-up. Ker ching. Another £70 back in little Richy’s pocket. So when they asked if I wanted to reduce my excess (which was £1000 even if I had a pretty minor scrape) I took up the offer. Ah no, down about £90, but only down a tenner overall.

I was a bit nervous about getting behind the wheel of a big people carrier, but when we went out to the car lot the car I was given looked like a regular one. It was seven seats, but if you had the back two seats up there was little to no luggage space. I only needed four seats and with them down there was a bit more room than in my own car’s boot. But not that much more. “I thought this was going to be a bigger car”, I said, not wanting to rock the boat after everyone had been so nice an apologetic. “Yeah that happens a lot,” said the woman. I thought I’d booked a bigger people carrier, but assumed that maybe I’d made a mistake. And was too nervous or polite or stupid to say that this car was not really want I had wanted. I thought it was probably going to be OK and was partly relieved that it wasn’t oversized so I’d be used to driving it. And the contract hadn’t specified the exact car type.

But when I got home and checked I realised I had booked a bigger car and that the one I had got was classified on the website as a small people carrier. I don’t know why I had been so trusting of a car hire company because almost every time we’ve hired something for the tour we haven’t ended up with what we asked for and have often had to drive back and change them. By now I didn’t have time to do that and was annoyed with myself for not standing up for what I’d thought. I had still been charge for the medium sized people carrier. So now I was down a bit more. I wondered if they had been so polite because they had known they were giving me the wrong car and were just going to front it out. Maybe they hadn’t just forgotten that they were picking me up, but hadn’t noticed my booking at all. And this was the only similar car they had.

As you may have noticed I am in entitled complaining mood this week, but for now there is nothing I can do about it as we have to leave tomorrow before the office is open so I am just crossing my fingers that we can fit everything in, or Phoebe is going to have to go on the roof rack.

As I get older this blog is going to be mainly me complaining about bad service. Though in this case I totally blame myself for not standing up for myself, when I was pretty sure they hadn't given me the car I had ordered.

Didcot became one of the few gigs on this tour where numbers were lower than last year (they put the tickets on sale much later than the other venues and maybe missed the burst of publicity), but I had enough in to have fun and apart from a couple in the front row who left during the interval (I had asked the woman not to imagine my ravaged, gaping anus so maybe that’s what put her off) I think the crowd liked it. The Cornerstone is another familiar venue and in fact I remembered the door code to the dressing room from the last time I was here (though the wear on the numbers made it pretty easy to guess and I have a theory that pretty much all of this type of door lock have the same code (just it’s the one that most people set, like having password as your password or playing 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 on the lottery).

But when you know the dressing room code without having to ask you’ve probably been in the game too long. Or maybe it’s if you know the wifi code without asking.