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Published: June 26th 2008
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Monday 2nd June
Up bright and early we arrived at Zurich airport. This flight was with Swiss air.
We were aware that the luggage weight on our non-international flights was 25kg, but we had held back on posting too much home after the exorbitant rates charged by La Poste in Geneva. We got a massive shock when our luggage weighed in at 16kg overweight! At 25 francs a kilo this came in at a whopping 400 francs (equivalent to around A$400).
Frantic scenes at the airport. We carted all our luggage across to one corner. Transfered anything heavy (and non-liquid) from the stored luggage to our carry-on bags. We jettisoned the beanies and gloves we purchased in London into the nearest garbage can. This is followed by the "long johns" we carted in from Aus and some other non-essential, easily replaceable clothing.
We dragged our now lighter three large cases and our much heavier carry-on luggage back to be re-weighed. It's still 8kg over but there's nothing else we can do except cough up 200 francs.
We decided to commiserate with a cooling drink and (for Marion and Owen) cake. Our flight is delayed by 30 mins (how do we manage to keep picking these delayed flights?). Marion discovered that her seat at the table is not the most desirable, as it gives her a full view of the urinals in the men's loo (good-planning by the architect there!). We used the time as best we could, me blogging and Marion and Owen choosing pictures for the next blog to be uploaded.
Boarding the plane for the short hop to London, we were relieved, after more than 2 months, to be finally returning to a country where we spoke the native language. The flight was unremarkable, a standard short hop. We collected our luggage and headed off to the taxi stand.
We were to pick up our car from Slough. Having engaged a taxi and loaded our luggage on board, we gave the driver the address. He scratched his head quizzically; so much for "The Knowledge" I thought. (Every London taxi driver is supposed to have memorised every street in the London area and to have been tested on it.) Fortunately we had a phone number, so the driver rang that to confirm the address. The address we had been given was wrong, it was given as xyz St instead of the correct.xyz Av. He spoke on the phone for quite some time sorting out the exact location.
Having reached xyz Av, we are searching for the hire car company when suddenly we come upon a differently named hire car company at the same address. This, we discover, is the same company trading under a different name. On entering the office we see signs for yet a third hire car company at the same premises. (Although I have rarely hired cars in Australia, at least one of these firms was known to me via advertising.)
We sit down to go through what, we assumed, was going to be the automatic straightforward paperwork. The fellow on the other side of the counter is quite presentable and well-spoken but we fear he is not long out of nappies.
When we arrived we were told that to receive the vehicle we had to pay £650 DLW excess on our credit card. We explained that we had not been notified that this was required/ showed them our Driveaway voucher/ travel insurance but they refused to release the car unless it was paid.
"Yeah. If were taking out the insurance with us now, we could waive the £650, but since you have already taken it out we can't".
Translation: "If you'd taken it out with us, we'd get a kickback, but since we don't get a kickback...tough."
"We'll just put a hold on that amount on your credit card, we won't actually take any money", he suggests.
"Yes, but that still reduces our credit availability significantly by tying up $1,500 on it that you really don't need."
After 5-10 minutes of this gobbledygook, we ask if we can speak to the recent nappy-shedder's superior.
The next lady in line is less well-dressed and less well-spoken, but just as uncooperative as the original clerk. We ask to speak to the manager.
Out of the manager's office comes a natural extra for the bad guys in The Sweeney or The Bill; he's short, almost as wide as he is tall, bullet-headed (with crew cut) and is wearing not quite clean jeans. I almost fall over backwards when he begins speaking.
"Yuh seez, it's dike dis, the system won't let us bookz yuhz out a car, unless yuhz payz the 650."
We point out that if we paid the insurance today the system would allow us to book out the car.
He leans forward on the desk and says "Yezz, but dat's built inta the system." (Honestly I am not exaggerating!!!)
Realising we are not going to get anywhere with this example of the alpha-male, and that the situation is still no pay, no car, we have little choice and process the credit card transaction.
Now we had booked the car in February specifying a station wagon and had been told we would be supplied with an automatic, diesel-powered SAAB station wagon or equivalent.
So now we were shown out to our car - the only one left of the category that we booked- a Mercedes sedan. The boot of this car had no chance of accommodating our baggage.
We explained that we had booked an automatic wagon specifically because of our baggage requirements - and why wasn't it available.
Next they tried fobbing us off with a manual station-wagon.
Again we made it clear that Marion was driving in a foreign country and needed to be able to concentrate on the road not the gears, especially since she is now used to driving an automatic at home. We had booked the car months ago, why wasn't it here?
After considerable time/ record checking and a few phone calls to find a similar vehicle, they eventually "upgraded" us to a VW peoplemover (fits baggage but no luggage cover) and we had to wait until they removed the extra seats in the boot. (And this only after they tried to make us cart the seats around in the car for the duration! More arguing to get them to hang onto them.).
We complained that this larger vehicle would be more uneconomical (using more fuel), and that we didn't have a cover for luggage. Eventually they reluctantly offered to exchange cars in Oxford on Thursday 5th. They also requested that we have a full tank of petrol but Marion told them (using some strong old-fashioned Aussie Anglo-Saxon words) that after all the mucking around, the least they could do was accept the petrol tank with whatever amount they get in it. We had wasted more than 2 hours of our holiday wrangling with them. So much for looking forward to dealing with people who spoke our language!
We have hired cars on a number of occasions and have never dealt with such an unprofessional, disorganised, unhelpful, incompetent company. They pretty well disassociated themselves with Drive Away and the voucher we had been sold.
The VW was quickly nick-named The Whale, being large, cumbersome and gutless. Even worse, it was incredibly noisy inside the cabin and people in the front and back seats both had to yell to hold any sort of conversation.
Most of the day had gone by this time, so we headed straight for our B&B in Dover. After settling in we went down to a local restaurant and had a very nice Italian dinner.
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