Here we go again!

A niece is getting married in late July and she and her fiance have decided to have the wedding in the UK, his origin, and where they met.  We have been invited and are planning to attend.

The first step was to find ourselves some accommodation close to the venue of the wedding.  This is to be Acton Scott an historic farm in the general vicinity of Shrewsbury.  It is at 'A' in this clip.

Having the date and venue of the main event fixed we decided the first thing to do was to book some accommodation nearby.  A general issue with this is that Visit Britain - a Government funded body, which we used on our previous visit - is no longer allowed to produce its listing of accommodation.  Instead one has to use private sector "equivalents".  I have put quotes around the word equivalent because of Flabmeister's Law:

If any public service is privatised a lower quality outcome will be achieved.

Typically the service will provide:

• a lower level of user satisfaction (because the key stakeholder is the owners of the service not the end user); and
• cost the end user more (because the price charged has to include a profit for the owners).

a musical interlude

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A  couple of attempts to use some of the equivalents which I found were hopeless. So when we noticed that cottages were part of the Acton Scott Estate portfolio that looked like a good idea.  Then Frances read the site more closely and realised that the place was intended to be an historic experience - specifically the epoch before electricity!  Pass!!  She then came up with English Country Cottages which seemed reasonable.  At least it offered a few places more or less in the vicinity of where we wished to go.  (The owners of this brand - see below - talk about 20,000 properties but that includes all their places in Europe and from memory Visit England had about 60,000.) It didn't appear to be ordered in a logical sequence and certainly not by proximity to the selected target location.

Whatever.  We found a place that looked good: Trap Cottage, Tugford.  So we start to book. Under the Visit Britain deal this was a transaction with the owners of the venue and could be undertaken by an exchange of emails.  That is far too convenient.  Under this deal (where English Country Cottages is a brand of the Hoseasons Group which is a subsidiary of a US firm Wyndham Worldwide) one has to use their booking system.

(A parenthesis about Hoseasons.  This name seemed familiar and when I looked them up for this post I found that they started as major agents for Norfolk Broads boat rentals.  Their website claims that they initiated many developments in UK travel including the first online booking system (in 1999).  Website design has moved on a lot since then.  As will be apparent from what follows I suspect that this site has watched the parade stream by - note also the Law mentioned above.) 

The website wasn't too bad until, on the payment page I noticed a typo I had made in our address.  I have found that online systems can get grumpy when the stated address doesn't match the address attached to the credit card so went back to correct it.  I then returned to the 'Payment page and found nothing worked.  It appears it had made the booking for me and now thought I was making a duplicating booking.   I couldn't find an email address to query this (welcome to the 21st Century, big innovators) and didn't feel like phoning the UK to sort it.  Let us see what happens.

Next step was an email from Hoseasons saying they needed more information to complete the booking and if I hadn't called them by 3pm the next day they would cancel the booking.  I wonder if they can spell Kustoma Cervis?  The email gave their working hours including 10 -4 on Sundayof which the most convenient was 10pm on the following night.  So I rang them.

Straight into a pick a choice system.  I chose not to take "amend a booking" as I didn't think I had a booking and very shortly had a voice tell me that they didn't work on a Sunday.!  Not happy!!  Try again choosing the amend a booking option and get through to someone who sounds a lot like Ringo Starr.  Unlike Ringo, who just sounded thick, this guy was really confused over what to do as the people I needed to talk don't work on Sunday.  Eventually - I was paying for the phone call, so no need to rush - he worked out to transfer me to his supervisor.  Keeping up the musical links, she sounded just like Janice Nicholls from "Thank your Lucky stars" even though she didn't pronounce the number between 4 and 6.  She said she'd send a confirming email (thus far it hasn't arrived, but the time is still booked out, so I am hopeful).

The email confirmation did eventually appear: in my Spam folder!  But anyway we are on the right track.  So far Hoseasons have not provided details on how to get to the property, just the name and phone number of the owner,  Why do these people rely on the phone so much?  Are they daft or do do they have lots of equity in British Telecom?  Fortunately Google comes to the rescue!

We have ended up booking two cottages with them, primarily because no-one else looked any better.  The second one is at Selsey near Chichester and will serve as a base for exploring the South Coast, after a night in Birmingham when we first arrive.

I have called Hoseasons twice and each time have been able to sort of resolve the issue.  On the last call I was given an email address to use but that has failed left, right and, as one might expect, centre.  Actually what seems to have failed left, right and, as one might expect, centre, is my transcription of the email address: read on.   I found a query section on their website so used that to ask them to give me an email address for the caretaker of the place at Selsey since we need to contact them before departure and phone calls cost too much.  They didn't have an email address but offered to pass on a message which offer  I have taken up.  They also offered her mobile number as a fall back, so a few brownie points - not quite a bouquet yet - to Hoseasons.