Customer Service

You probably haven’t noticed, as I’ve hardly mentioned it, but I took a little trip to Dublin recently, which of course meant getting to, and from, the airport. As I was aiming to go directly back to the office from the airport on my return, getting there by public transport wasn’t an option, so I looked into booking airport parking. I found some (via the airport’s website, but not at the airport) and went online to book. The site set out that they ran a shuttle bus to the airport on the hour and the half hour, but didn’t seem to say how long it took, so I sent them an e-mail to ask.

This was on 24th January.

A week before I was due to go, having had no reply, I sent a follow up.

Still no reply, so I decided to give up, sent them an e-mail to cancel the booking and booked elsewhere, on the basis that the extra £6 was worth it for the peace of mind (after all, if they can’t respond to an e-mail after 3 weeks it doesn’t fill me with confidence about their ability to run buses on time, or indeed collect their customers from the airport. .)

And I would have written it off and forgotten it had it not been for the fact that I received an e-mail this morning. It was responding to mine, and read;

“You need to e-mail us or ring us with your registration number of you car so we can check your booking.”

(Sic.)

Now, this was a response to my original e-mail, in which I had included their booking reference, which you would think would have allowed them to trace my booking, but in any case

(i) Why would they need my booking details to know how far away from the airport their car park is and
(ii) if they had read the original e-mail I sent (and as it was on the bottom of the mail sent back, I’m guessing that they had) they would have known I’d originally wanted parking from 15-18th February, so might have worked out that a response on 25th February was unlikely to be of much use.

So I sent back an e-mail, politely explaining this.

I then got another e-mail.

To tell me that they are about 10 minutes drive from the airport.

I am tempted to write back and suggest that they consider reading the e-mails. But life is too short.

When I decide it’s time to change my car I might go there, though. With that level or organisation I might end up with a whole new car….