Friday 24 August 2012

Great Service

I frequently write about business in the UK and poor customer service.  Well, some companies deserve a mention for the great service they provided this week.

My story starts on Tuesday when we left the French Alps for our 14 hours drive home.  With temperatures in the high 30C's the air-conditioning pump on our Jeep seized and in the process shredded the fanbelt.  We managed to get to a garage at Saints Geosmes a small community in the North East of France.

The staff at the garage were friendly and tried everything they could to find us a fanbelt but with no luck.  A lot of French businesses shut down during August for their annual summer vacation and the nearest Jeep supplier, 65 kilometres away, at Dijion weren't answering the telephone.  It was now lunchtime in France and everything shuts down for a couple of hours for the traditional lunch or siesta break.  Stranded, we did the only thing we could think of and rang home and spoke to the motor supplier in Cwmbran that we frequently deal with  Mon & Border Motors.

Explaining we wanted a smaller fanbelt than the norm for our jeep as we wanted to bypass the air con pump Mon and Border came up with 3 possible sizes that might work.  They ordered the 3 belts and received them within a couple of hours.  By 4pm (UK time) Fedex had collected the parts.  The next morning by 10:00am (French time) Fedex delivered the parcel and we were back on the road by 10:30am.

So a big thank you to several businesses who provided great service and got this traveller back on the road in less than a day.