Homeward bound
Oct. 6th, 2011 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe are leaving Spain under a cloud - a low grey cloud, and almost the first we've seen all week - and on a sea rolling more vigourously than on our outward journey. Nonetheless, we are on the ferry, and so is our poor battered car, and a couple of days ago that wasn't at all certain, so all in all I'm content. And there's a patch of silver over to my right, where a little sun is leaking through the clouds.
We've had an anxious couple of days, with a great deal of telephoning and even more driving, some of it probably self-inflicted - with hindsight, we made some wrong decisions, most but not all of them because we assumed things about our insurers and assistance company that turned out not to be the case (that they would, for example, being owned by the same company, talk to each other; that having sold us European cover they would be able to find a Spanish speaker to look after the case; that they would appreciate that a repair which had to be authorised by an assessor the day after we were due to leave Spain was not an ideal solution; that when they said they would call us back, they would call us back; stuff like that). For a while it looked as if we would have to scrap the car because we couldn't get a quick and dirty repair done to let us drive it home.
We were misled by the efficiency with which Britannia Rescue swung into action and got us towed off the roadside, and (after a delay, which should have warned us, while they tried to locate a car hire firm - open on a Sunday, in Spain, which isn't realistic) sent a taxi to take us to our hotel, and another to take us to the car hire firm in the morning. All this worked very well, because it is what they do, but in hindsight, in expecting continuing support we were taking them outside their comfort zone, and they kept going quiet and awaiting instructions. Similarly, we seem to have been passed from person to person at the insurers, and by the time we reached the person who was prepared to assume responsibility, look at the problem as a whole and help us to resolve it, valuable time had been lost. Plus, we were by now a hundred miles away, in the mountains.
So yesterday we did what we should have done two days earlier, and returned to Santo Domingo de la Calzada for some intensive haggling, with much passing of the phone from one person to another, and at some point the logjam broke. I had the impression that the two things that most galvanised the person I was speaking to at the international assistance company were the words "temporary repair - small claim" and his realisation that if he couldn't get us and our luggage home in our car, he was going to have to do it some other way. "You live in London?" he asked, hopefully, and I said no, we lived in the north of England, with much emphasis on that 'north'.
Anyway, for whatever reason, the garage conceded that while their professional dignity would not allow them to lash it up themselves, they knew a man who would. It would take all afternoon, though, and the headlamp had been sufficiently bashed that we shouldn't drive it at night, so we had to cancel the hotel we had booked on the coast and find somewhere in Santo Domingo (not in itself a problem, though the more we abandoned the itinerary we had planned, the more convinced I was of what a good one it had been).
Then we drove the hired car back to the Europcar depot in Burgos, along the road we had driven into Santo Domingo that morning, with a little help from a fellow customer at the petrol station who very kindly guided us to the office. There we met the taxi, organised by the rescue company (who were now back on home ground, and phoned us at each stage to check that all was well). He drove us back to the garage where we were reunited with our funny-looking car, now funnier looking than ever, with Frankenstein type staples in its bumper. The mechanic had to phone a friend before he could convey that in order to give us a receipt he needed not the car's papers but ours, but eventually all was sorted and we were able to spend a relaxing evening strolling around the walls of Santo Domingo (complete with storks' nests) and then dining on the Pilgrim menu (set menu, cheap and cheerful, good value) in a café in the old town.
So in the end it wasn't such a bad last evening after all.
We've had an anxious couple of days, with a great deal of telephoning and even more driving, some of it probably self-inflicted - with hindsight, we made some wrong decisions, most but not all of them because we assumed things about our insurers and assistance company that turned out not to be the case (that they would, for example, being owned by the same company, talk to each other; that having sold us European cover they would be able to find a Spanish speaker to look after the case; that they would appreciate that a repair which had to be authorised by an assessor the day after we were due to leave Spain was not an ideal solution; that when they said they would call us back, they would call us back; stuff like that). For a while it looked as if we would have to scrap the car because we couldn't get a quick and dirty repair done to let us drive it home.
We were misled by the efficiency with which Britannia Rescue swung into action and got us towed off the roadside, and (after a delay, which should have warned us, while they tried to locate a car hire firm - open on a Sunday, in Spain, which isn't realistic) sent a taxi to take us to our hotel, and another to take us to the car hire firm in the morning. All this worked very well, because it is what they do, but in hindsight, in expecting continuing support we were taking them outside their comfort zone, and they kept going quiet and awaiting instructions. Similarly, we seem to have been passed from person to person at the insurers, and by the time we reached the person who was prepared to assume responsibility, look at the problem as a whole and help us to resolve it, valuable time had been lost. Plus, we were by now a hundred miles away, in the mountains.
So yesterday we did what we should have done two days earlier, and returned to Santo Domingo de la Calzada for some intensive haggling, with much passing of the phone from one person to another, and at some point the logjam broke. I had the impression that the two things that most galvanised the person I was speaking to at the international assistance company were the words "temporary repair - small claim" and his realisation that if he couldn't get us and our luggage home in our car, he was going to have to do it some other way. "You live in London?" he asked, hopefully, and I said no, we lived in the north of England, with much emphasis on that 'north'.
Anyway, for whatever reason, the garage conceded that while their professional dignity would not allow them to lash it up themselves, they knew a man who would. It would take all afternoon, though, and the headlamp had been sufficiently bashed that we shouldn't drive it at night, so we had to cancel the hotel we had booked on the coast and find somewhere in Santo Domingo (not in itself a problem, though the more we abandoned the itinerary we had planned, the more convinced I was of what a good one it had been).
Then we drove the hired car back to the Europcar depot in Burgos, along the road we had driven into Santo Domingo that morning, with a little help from a fellow customer at the petrol station who very kindly guided us to the office. There we met the taxi, organised by the rescue company (who were now back on home ground, and phoned us at each stage to check that all was well). He drove us back to the garage where we were reunited with our funny-looking car, now funnier looking than ever, with Frankenstein type staples in its bumper. The mechanic had to phone a friend before he could convey that in order to give us a receipt he needed not the car's papers but ours, but eventually all was sorted and we were able to spend a relaxing evening strolling around the walls of Santo Domingo (complete with storks' nests) and then dining on the Pilgrim menu (set menu, cheap and cheerful, good value) in a café in the old town.
So in the end it wasn't such a bad last evening after all.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-08 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-11 10:03 am (UTC)Beautifully put!
no subject
Date: 2011-10-14 03:17 pm (UTC)Glad that the rest of the adventure was enjoyable!