{"id":10519,"date":"2015-02-15T21:39:11","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T21:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=10519"},"modified":"2015-02-15T21:39:11","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T21:39:11","slug":"blogathon-1515-50-shades-of-townsends-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=10519","title":{"rendered":"Blogathon 15\/15 \u2013 50 shades of Townsends customer service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thinking very dark thoughts about how awful my Europcar experience had been, I fished out my phone, as I walked away from Europcar&#8217;s &#8216;reception&#8217;, and once again googled &#8216;van hire Rugby&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Enterprise Car Rental came up, the next highest google return, after Europcar.<\/p>\n<p>But my mainstream palate was jaded after the Europcar experience, so through no fault of theirs, I decided to give Enterprise a miss.<\/p>\n<p>The first independent company google offered me was Townsend Vehicle Hire.<\/p>\n<p>I called them.<\/p>\n<p>Me: Hi. I need to hire a van. Today (it was about 1.30pm). For 24 hours<\/p>\n<p>TVH: Yep, no problem. How large?<\/p>\n<p>Me: (explained)<\/p>\n<p>TVH: The only van we have that small is out on a job. It should be back in about half an hour though.<\/p>\n<p>Me: Brilliant. What do you need from me?<\/p>\n<p>TVH: Both parts of your driving licence (which I had on me), and a utility bill or a bank statement<\/p>\n<p>I cursed to myself<\/p>\n<p>Me: I&#8217;ll be there in about 40 minutes<\/p>\n<p>I walked down to the train station and got in a taxi, and asked him to take me home (so I could get a utility bill) and then take me on to Townsends Van Hire.<\/p>\n<p>While the taxi waited outside the house I looked all over the place for a utility bill.<\/p>\n<p>Well.<\/p>\n<p>There weren&#8217;t any.<\/p>\n<p>So I picked up a handful of bank statements.<\/p>\n<p>The taxi driver took me to Somers Road.<\/p>\n<p>The hire receptionist photocopied my bank statement (just the address and logo at the top), and my driving licence.<\/p>\n<p>She relieved me of a hefty chunk of money as a deposit.<\/p>\n<p>And then I sat down and waiting for the on-hire van to be returned.<\/p>\n<p>Less than 10 minutes later one of her colleagues came over and asked if I was waiting for the van.<\/p>\n<p>I said I was.<\/p>\n<p>He tried to ring the driver.<\/p>\n<p>Got no reply.<\/p>\n<p>So he came back to me and said &#8216;Look, we&#8217;ve got another van you can have. It&#8217;s a bit bigger than the one you wanted. But you can have it for no extra charge. At least it&#8217;ll get you on your way and you won&#8217;t need to keep waiting here&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Brilliant!<\/p>\n<p>They changed the paperwork to reflect the upgrade, I jumped in the van and drove back to my house.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/wp-content\/\/2015\/02\/Van.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10521\" src=\"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/wp-content\/\/2015\/02\/Van-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Van\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Van-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Van-113x150.jpg 113w, https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Van.jpg 540w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>About 45 minutes later Liam (my helper) arrived and helped me load the three large, awkward-shaped boxes in to the van.<\/p>\n<p>I thanked him, gave him some financial recompense, and got in the van and headed\u00a0it up the M1.<\/p>\n<p>When I returned the van the next day, the hire receptionist said &#8216;As soon as you drove off the other van arrived&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Sods law, I said.<\/p>\n<p>But wan&#8217;t that nice of them?<\/p>\n<p>An upgrade, just to get me on my way, and at no extra cost?<\/p>\n<p>Now that&#8217;s what I call good customer service.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Europcar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thinking very dark thoughts about how awful my Europcar experience had been, I fished out my phone, as I walked away from Europcar&#8217;s &#8216;reception&#8217;, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}