Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
I think there's only one car-hire company in the Arrivals Hall Colin, the others are along Snargate Street.
Roger
Guest 660- Registered: 14 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,205
Roger the buses have nothing to do with the trains,DHB run the buses to the Eastern Docks and some of the cruise companies run shuttle buses,the more expensive the cruise the less chance of a bus though,when the Icelandic dust cloud came on we double manned our office at short notice and run trains all night,we had extra staff booked on and we were nearly all doing 12 hrs,there were no buses because of the works and DHB decreed that it was not safe for the buses plus they couldn't get in and turn round.
We talk to the docks as we did again at the beginning of last week when there were problems with airports such as Leeds,and let then know off additional passengers coming thru,and they kept the docks open and ran extra ships which they don't advertise to foot passengers overnight because there is nowhere to buy tickets at the docks so they close normally about 8pm and reopen at about 7am.
Why should Southeastern run extra buses,our job is running trains,as far as running buses to and from the Station in nearly every guide book it says get a bus from the station,there isn't one,but I will be bending Cllr Collors ear because they could run a bus every half hour or so from the Priory to the Castle at least.
If you knew what I know,we would both be in trouble!
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
- Posts: 4,150
Luckily for me Roger, and I suspect others, there are two car hire companies inside the Eastern Docks, `AVIS` and `ENTERPRISE`. Why lucky? Because the other week, I had a car booked online with Avis 2 weeks in advance. When I got there, after walking from the bus at Pencester, it was 09.30, and my car was booked for 10.00. I was early just in case it was ready. I`m not going through every detail to bore the pants off everyone on here, but at 11.20, after sitting down there and asking where the F... is the car for the fourth time, the young man of foreign origin was on the phone and able to offer me one of two cars now available, BOTH AT MAIDSTONE!!! Now listen to this, he offered all expenses to me if I wished to travel up there on the train to get it!! As you can see, my blood is boiling which is why I haven`t mentioned it on here before. I got an instant refund, an apology after waiting over 2 hours, and crossed the reception hall to Enterprise car rental who had one available, and saved the day. During the time I waited, a lady in her 50s maybe, wearing Avis uniform said to the Avis man behind the counter, "we`re gonna lose all these customers". I`m not the only one apparently to find that Avis is crap. In fact, while I`m bubbling up, I ought to get on the phone and ask them when they`re going to ask me why I cancelled the contract.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
Guest 694- Registered: 22 Mar 2010
- Posts: 778
i have used Enterprise lots, and they have always been wonderful!
So i try to use them all the time.
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
- Posts: 4,150
Good thing too Jenni. They even pick you up and drop you off as well, and they were the same cost as Avis, and pleasant to deal with. No disrespect to the Avis chap, but if he`d have been English, he would have apologised earlier and got something done. This Avis man told me when I first asked at 10.20 that I have to wait for one to be returned, which can take 20mins or half hour. Note I`m already 20 mins late with the car, and I`m assuming one coming in would have to be valeted first? Enterprise for me anytime, Avis never again.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
Thanks John - presumably your posting was in reply to a posting I made back in April about the volcanic ash and extra people using the trains and ferries.
Southeastern obviously knew about the extra passengers, that's why they did what they did for the passengers.
I was surprised to read your piece "Why should Southeastern run extra buses, our job is running trains, as far as running buses to and from the Station in nearly every guide book, it says get a bus from the station, there isn't one"
I had a letter from DHB advising me what they had put on to help the passengers, also advising about the extra buses etc. put on to take the people from the Docks to the station; with loads more people using the trains, I would have thought it good customer relations for SouthEastern to provide transport for their extra customers to get to the Docks for their onward travelling.
Hopefully it won't happen again - at least not as bad as in April.
Roger
Colin - kick a***!!!
Sadly that is the only way to get a fair deal these days, whetehr it is car hire, service or health care. People don't seem to know the meaning of words like service, courtesy or customer.
I also think that just because a company is a rail company doesn't mean they can't do a bit of customer care outside the box. It is the extra mile that makes the difference in business. Rail companies not excluded.
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
Sorry Colin, I'd forgotten about Enterprise.
Very sad about Avis; they changed their manager a few months ago, sounds very badly organised.
No wonder you wanted to blow your top.
Roger
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
customer care, now that is a thing.
why a bus cannot run from the station to the castle in the tourist season baffles me.
Guest 693- Registered: 12 Nov 2009
- Posts: 1,266
Colin
For my sins I spent most of the 80s as area manager for Budget Rent A Car at the London Airports franchise, which included a few other locations in central London, Slough and - rather curiously - Plymouth. I do happen to know a little bit about car rental, therefore, and can tell you that if any of the staff for whom I had been responsible had treated you like that, they would have been dismissed on the spot. In a cut throat industry like car rental, customer care is everything, and Avis (in my time, at least) were top dog in that department. In my experience, when calamity happens, the only course of action is to be 100% honest with the customer; had it been myself or any of my staff on duty, the fact that the car was in Maidstone would have been explained to you, the paperwork completed and you would have been driven home whilst your car was being driven down from Maidstone to Dover, and the car delivered to you later. Your first day's rental would have been free of charge and a 10% discount on your next rental offered; the fact is that things do go wrong in all forms of business, but the car rental business especially so due to things out of the company's control happening, such as accidents, traffic jams and breakdowns. All Budget customers were treated like adults and not fobbed off; the vast majority responded well to that, in the understanding that shit does happen - a few didn't like it and vented their spleen, but generally calmed down after a while and accepted things. I think the staff on duty that day at Avis were inexperienced and made the classic mistake of trying to cover things up - the result: a customer who will never use Avis again and who will tell everybody their story, as you've done. How much better would it have been to have made a fuss of the customer and told things as they were - you'd have probably accepted the fates and appreciated the company going out of their way to put things right.
As an illustration of this, I'll tell you a little anecdote of one rental at Gatwick that I covered out of hours........ We'd taken delivery of half a dozen new Peugeot 205 GTIs one particular afternoon, and they were sitting on the forecourt gleaming, full of petrol and ready to go when the office closed at 6pm. I came back at 9pm to cover a late booking, and whilst I was waiting for his flight to clear and the phone to ring, a customer walked in off the street wanting to rent one of the new Peugeots. Did the paperwork, and off he went. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang just as I was locking up, and it was the same customer complaining that the car smelled of petrol; he wasn't too far away, so I took one of the others as a replacement and swapped the car over for him at the hotel he was staying at. He was absolutley made up that we'd gone the extra mile and shown customer care that we hadn't really needed to. The upshot was that his company opened a volume user account with Budget Rent A Car the very next day that in its first year generated over £100,000 worth of business with our franchise alone. And the cause of the petrol fumes in his original car? A rupture in the pipe leading to the petrol tank from the filler nozzle - the boot compartment was half full of petrol! And, he'd smoked a cigarette in the car on the way to his hotel! And, so had I on my way home in it!
True friends stab you in the front.
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
- Posts: 4,150
Thank you all, and it was a posting I planned a few weeks ago, but refrained from doing so as I don`t need the nightmare of it all again, and I can run on a short fuse which isn`t good for me. Thank you.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
- Posts: 4,150
The only other two picture`s of Dover in a book Tony Jayms kindly gave me. Thanks mate, and here they are. Both taken around the mid 50s I suspect. The top picture is of a `Schools` class engine, 40 of which were built from 1930 onwards. They were numbered from 900 to 939, and number 911 was actually named `DOVER`, and I believe one of the nameplates is preserved in Dover college. Go to platform two at the Priory today, and see how much the view above has changed.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
Guest 690- Registered: 10 Oct 2009
- Posts: 4,150
14 September 2010
22:3670727 Another little gem I`ve come across. Dover Priory station during wartime. No date available.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
14 September 2010
22:3870728There was a girl killed there when that bomb hit the station to.
Guest 673- Registered: 16 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,388
15 September 2010
02:1770769There is some footage of Dover Priory station, after damage sustained in the prolonged shelling towards the end of the war, in the familiar newsreel from Pathe News entitled "Hellfire Corner" and produced in 1944.
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=1288515 September 2010
09:4670805Excellent voice-over from Mr Cholmondely-Walker there. Good stuff Ed, thanks.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
Tell them that I came, and no one answered.
