Ducati Sporting Club UK - Yesterday's drama's cont ....

Update time, for continuity I'll cover what I put up in the Factory Trip Oh No! thread here as well ...

Quote:

Well ... where do I start ..

Our flight was at 11:30 in the morning, hotel reception reckons a max of 1hr to get there and I know the way already so no problems there .. we figure we leave at 9am we're there by 10 at the latest with 50 minutes of check-in time remaining - no problems. Get out into the rental car and it won't start. battery is fine, alarm works etc etc. And then started hearing a clicking sound when the ignition was turned on, no good.

We go into the hotel reception and talk to the gent there, he rings hertz for us and they drag it on for 10 minutes before telling us that there's nothing they can do, we need to ring Hertz assistance. We do that, they want to send out a truck to pick up the car, have the truck take us to Bologna airport to get another car (we are flying out of Forli airport remember ..) and then drive to Forli. I can see us missing the flight at this point so I tell them that it won't work and we'll miss our flight. They didn't give a flying ****!!!! I'm sorry but thats all we can do. Back and forth to hertz again on the phone and they offer to pay for a taxi to get us to Bologna airport where we pick up the replacement car and drive to Forli. However, by this time there is NO chance of making the flight. I can't believe how flippant they were about it all. When I asked them how they were going to pay to have my flight rescheduled etc she said it wasn't her problem.

I get to Forli airport and go to the Ryanair desk to see what we can do. There's no Ryanair staff around but the information desk can sell us a ticket for the flight in the evening departing at 10:20pm, for 315 euro each! I said no way and got a bunch of numbers for Ryanair but couldn't get through on any of them. So, I can get internet access on my phone so I jump on the easyjet website (they fly out of Bologna airport) and I could get a flight at half the price but I can't book it on the web because I can't enter an underscore on my phone to confirm with my e-mail address! Trawling through their website (the phone is fairly slow browsing) looking for a contact number didn't turn anything up and we were fast running out of time to make that flight, it left at 4:05pm and we were in Forli, not Bologna. So we couldn't make it, despite the fact that we had started driving back to Bologna. So we turned around, paid the 640 euro for our tickets and decided to make something of the rest of the day before our flight.

We drove to Ravenna, only 30 minutes away, and had a good look around and had a nice dinner there. Got back to the car ready to drive back to the airport and found a goddamn parking ticket for 35 euro!! I couldn't believe it. Whatever, ... we drive back, catch the plane, arrive in Stansted thinking we are nearly home and the nightmare will be all over soon. Pick up our bags and ring the APH meet and greet service to deliver our car. It will be up to 20 minutes (they say 10 on the website I think, nevermind) ok, we wait. We go downstairs to wait, standing in the snow (yes, it was snowing at Stansted), and it's becoming very obvious that APH are having problems. There were heaps of people standing around waiting for their cars. In the end I rang them twice after the originial phone call to find out where the car was and we finally got it 55 minutes after ringing them the first time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:o

I'm not a happy camper, as you may well expect, and plan to be making a number of phone calls this morning and writing some follow up letters!

Well Hertz UK are singing a different tune (so far). They have all the details and I have a reference number for the complaint etc. The process from here is that it is assigned to an assesor and they contact the relevant branches in Italy for confirmation of the details and then they will let me know what the decision is. Obviously if they arrive at a different decision to me then it will be appealed etc.

The good news is that it 'appears' to be a relatively straightforward case and that if the decision goes my way the amount will be refunded in full.

We all know of situations like this where the decision doesn't go your way, for whatever reason, so my chickens remain uncounted. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and you won't read about me on the front page of the Times quoting 50 dead in killing spree as Aussie with semi-auto rifle storms Hertz headquarters!