English Customer Service 2

Flight to Glasgow from EMA, figured we'll catch a taxi (£16), so booked it online and got confirmation email etc. All seemed straightforward, at which point I should have been concerned, but really booking a taxi...how fucking hard can that be ?!
Shepshed Taxi's. 20 minutes late for pickup, and I had to ring twice to find out where the fuck they were. No apology from the driver, just some stupid excuse he'd been delayed as his last passenger had to drive around to find an ATM. I don't care. It's not relevant, I'd booked a specific time. Use another driver. Then tried to claim I'd booked it for 1010 - even though I had the fucking printout saying 10am.

On one of the calls I'd said "so what discount will be put through for this" and got told something would be sorted. Mentioned this to the driver who laughed. Ahhh bad move fucktard. So I knocked off £1.50 /5min waiting, so £6 as they were 20 minutes late. Oh how heartbroken the poor wee lad looked. I pointed out that if he'd had to wait for me, I'd have been charged, so it seemed reasonable that it worked both ways.

I even contacted the company to complain and got a rather ignorant, and unhelpful, reply.

Result: Avoid Shepshed Taxi's.

English customer service 1

There will be two parts to this occasional series on the rubbish that is customer service. There are, obviously, outstanding examples (Beers of Europe and Loch Fyne Whiskies spring to mind). But this is an example of the poor-average.

I like a cigar every-so-often. I tend to use SimplyCigars, who are, generally, excellent and I'd thoroughly recommend them. But this xmas order was an exercise in frustration. I placed it around the 10th of Dec, and received notification that it had shipped a couple of days later. 8 days later it still hadn't arrived, so I emailed - no response (contrary to the claim on the website of response within 24 hours). I ended up ringing 8 times and emailing 3 times, I kept get responses saying they'd get back to me and that it had been picked up by royalmail and was their problem. They generally didn't get back to me, only returning calls twice and no emails. I even rang RoyalMail who said they had never received it - and their response was very quick and helpful. in the end, following a number of increasingly frequent calls, simply cigars shipped a replacement out - which arrived the day before I left for holiday.

Can't say I was very impressed with their inability to get back to me, or lack of ownership of the issues. Their resolution was good, if last minute. And in their defence, their service upto now has been excellent, and I'll stick with them. But still, it's pretty annoying.