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The first of we hope not many !
February 14, 2001
please,
i am getting married at st barnabus' church, limmasol,
on the 21st of this
month (february). could you please forward to me your
rates. i will
require a car to pick us up from this church to take us
to the reception in st
andrew's street, again in limmasol.
thank you
kevin garby, oxford, england
Many thanks for your enquiry and
congratulations on your forthcoming
Wedding.
We have a 6 door white Mercedes available which costs C£60
per hour.
If you are interested please let me know asap.
Best Regards
Susannah
...and many thanks for your prompt
and informative reply, and for your
congratulations.
yes, i would be very interested in this car, and would like to
book it. how
might i do this?
regards
kevin garby
ps would this price include 'decoration'?
Dear Kevin
Many thanks for your reply.
First off I need to know what time you wish to picked up from
the Church and
the name of the place that you will be holding the reception.
I take it this is for a 1 hour booking.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best Regards
Susannah
thank you susannah. the thing is i
don't have the exact details of the
reception with me, they're at home. i do know, however, that
i'm getting wed
at 3.00 (how can i forget this?), the car will be requirede
from about
4.00pm. it will, i imagine, be a 1 hour booking. could i book
this vehicle
and get in touch with you tomorrow with all the details you
need?
regards
kg
February 15, 2001
Dear Kevin
What I will do is provisionally book the car for you for 4-5pm
to be at St Barnabus' Church.
When you get your details together please pass them on to me
asap.
Please find attached our fax authorisation form which you will
need to fill
in with your credit card details for the amount of C£60.
We do not cash this but hold it as security in the event that
you cancel the
booking.
You can then pay the driver on the day in cash.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best Regards
Susannah
dear susannah
thank you very much for all your help with this. this booking
is perfect but
can i book the car for 1 hour from 4.15 instead, and i can
confirm that the
church is st. barnabus'. the car's destination will be along
the seafront
to:44 patron germanou
3095 limassol.
unfortunately, the fax machine i have access to here at work
does not allow
overseas faxing so i will complete and return the form you
sent me instead.
i hope this is satisfactory.
once again, many thanks!
O!, might i also ask that the car has the traditional ribbon
extending from
the car's bonnet? if this incurs an extra cost i would
certainly meet it
when my best man pays the driver.
have a nice day. i am looking forward to
arriving in cyprus tomorrow
evening...
regards
kg
Dear Kevin
Many thanks for the e-mail.
All is booked for you and yes there will be a ribbon on the
car so don't
worry about that.
If you could send me some contact details in Cyprus so that
should there be
a problem I will be able to contact you ( there won't be but
better to be
safe )
Our telephone number here is 04 665408 so if you want to
telephone me,a when
you arrive that will be fine.
Best Regards
Susannah
dear susannah
wonderful, thank you!
i do not, however, have a contact phone number with me. i have
left it at
home. i can be contacted though at the continental hotel,
limassol, if there
is a problem. (as you say, there probably won't be) in any
case i will
confirm with you on monday.
cheers
kg
February 26, 2001
hello susannah
good afternoon. i'm writing this, but didn't expect to
be. our wedding was
lovely, however i was quite sad that the wedding car
turned up to at my
wife's mother's house with no decoration at all; no
corsage and no
ribbons.
to be fair, the driver went away during the service and
returned with
ribbon, but i felt let down. i felt also that the photos
of my wife
entering the car were conspicuous in their lack of
ornament; the car looked like a taxi.
now i'm sure that this was not your fault as such but i
would be grateful
if you could let me know if what went wrong...
regards
kg
February 26, 2001
Dear Kevin
I'm so sorry that this happened but this appears to be a
total
misunderstanding between me and the driver and I cannot
apologise enough.
I do have a suggestion though that might be of interest
to you in that we
can always take your photographs and decorate them.
We can also offer you a free page on our weddings
website publishing some of your photographs for all your
friends and family to see.
Panicos came to see us after your wedding and he too was
very upset that
this had happened as usually he would of decorated the
car with ribbons on
request( corsage is always extra) but it seems that I
was not clear with
the request.
Let me know your thoughts.
Best Regards
Susannah
March 10, 2001
susannah
i'm afraid i must decline your offers. in the
first instance i know,
through being employed in digital photography, that my
photos cannot
be retouched to my satisfaction, nor would i let
anyone try to do so. in
the second case, i find it an insult that, by way
of recompense, you
should allow me to forward my wedding photos to
you so that you may display them on your
web-site '...for all your friends and family to see' when in
reality this site is a purely commercial site, a site
where you might proudly show off examples of
'satisfied customers'. we are certainly not 'satisfied
customers', and, again, i find it repulsive that you should
try to
turn our dissatifaction and disappointment
to your own gain.
as things turned out, i might as well have ordered a
taxi to take my
wife to the church; with this in mind i would now only
be satisfied with a
reimbursement of my fee to you minus the amount i would
have spent on a taxi.
i hope to hear from you soon.
kevin garby
March 16,
Dear Mr Garby,
This has been forwarded for me to deal with, as Susannah
is far too upset.
Of course this was a mistake on the part of the driver,
who should have
put ribbons on the car as he was informed the
booking was for a wedding.
As you say, he went away during the service and returned
with ribbons, and
as an extra touch by way of apology, says he also put on
the pom pom
netting.
Apparently this was appreciated, and (as is not normal,)
was taken away by
your party as a souvenir.
The price on the Mercedes Long wheel base 'taxi' that we
are talking about
is C£60 for airport transfers as well as weddings, we
do not charge any
extra because it is a wedding.
This is a service we provide directly from the driver.
It has been made
clear to the driver that this was not acceptable, we
have heard his
explanation that it was an unfortunate oversight,
because we have always
had good reports of his friendliness and
helpfulness before, but have told him that any further work we put his way is
hanging in the balance. I am
forwarding your request for a refund to him, but as that
is his standard
charge anyway, do not think that he will give you a
refund at all. You
really should have taken it up with him at the time.
This is not the UK,
and things very rarely work in the same way.
Susannah's offer of a web page was not in order to
promote us, this web
page would have been a private one, with access
only to you and those to whom you gave the URL. Your family and
friends, as stated.
I am sure you are a fine digital photographer, but we
certainly could have
tried to do something for you, we have a fine top dollar
graphics man, (I
have heard that Susannah approached him and asked if he
would be willing to do this) the fact that you were not
even willing to let him try (there are after all no negatives to ruin with digital photo's)
this gives me the
impression that the ' conspicuous lack of
decoration on those photo's '
is now turning into something else.
It was her way of trying to in some way to put right
the thing that you
were complaining about, namely the ' conspicuous lack
of decoration on those photo's ' and offering you something that
she thought would please you, not offend you.
You did not arrange a wedding
with us, just hired a car through us.
Susannah tried to give you the same friendly
service that she gives to all those people that she deals with, and you are wrong, it
is not a purely
commercial site, Cyprus-weddings is a part of
Cyprus-flowers, (The place that people buy the corsage) the wedding section
has free information on it, we help many people get the info they need and
enable them to make
their own wedding arrangements here that
have no gain for us whatever, we also post forthcoming marriages at no charge
and try to help people have a friendlier and more welcoming
experience than they otherwise might. Many couples get help from us and never spend a
penny on our commercial sites - the ones that sell
accommodation , cruises and other peripherals to tourists and honeymooners alike.
Susannah gets considerably more from her job than the
far less than English minimum wage that she earns, she gets the
warm glow of helping people, (She is an extraordinary woman who
spent a long time in Africa giving free service to needier people) which maybe
explains why your letter has shot her to pieces and shattered some of
her self confidence, she feels terrible and is the kind of person who will
have sleepless nights about
this. I am very sorry that you had this lousy experience, yes,
the bottom line is that it was our fault, and I will see what the
driver wishes to do about
it.
Best wishes
Jayne
22 March
jane
i am aware i did not organise a wedding through
yourselves and with
hindsight i am very glad we didn't...... now tell me. if
i have a complaint,
who do i complain to? susannah? (no, she takes it far
too personally and
gets too upset) yourself? (yes, but then on the
one hand, you tell me i do
have a legitimate complaint, on the other hand i receive
a quite
extraordinary email from you that frankly does very
little for customer
relations) for instance, when you say we had 'pom pom'
netting, i think yes,
but where then were these ribbons you spoke of? and for
your offer of
doctoring my photos, why don't we go all the way and
replace your taxi with
a rolls royce? and where you get the '...impression that
the ' conspicuous
lack of decoration on those photo's ' is now turning
into something else.'
let me tell you that it most certainly is not. it is a
very simple matter, i
hope you understand this, of your taxi turning up with
no decoration, no
cortege, and for goodness sake it was a wedding, after
my speaking with
susannah for a quarter of an hour the day before
explicity stating my
requirements. and for this i pay £60 per hour, not just
£60. i employed this
driver for nearly 2 and a half hours. and let me
state also that no matter
what you suggest, my contract was with yourselves, and
not the driver. so i
wonder how you can tell me, '...You really should have
taken it up with him
at the time... This is not the UK...'? are you
suggesting that i should
have, on my wedding day, stopped and had a row with the
driver? there as
nothing he could do retrospectively because my only
problem was that he
turned up with no decoration, what you call an
'...unfortunate oversight'.
good job he remembered to put his trousers on, i say.
i can see i will get no satisfaction from this, not this
way anyway. but
yes, i am aware of the other websites and what i intend
to do tomorrow
morning is post this exchange of emails between susannah
and i first, then
yourself and i, somewhere on one of these sites.
as it happens, i am returning to cyprus for 2 weeks over
easter as part of a
party of 8. i had thought in my original discourse with
susannah that we
would arrange cars from yourselves; now, i think
not...................
kg
22nd March
Dear Mr Garby
Yes of course you have a complaint,
there has never been any question of that.
You did first complain to Susannah,
who apologised and took the can (so to speak)
You did not ask for financial
recompense , but for 'an explanation' She gave you one and said 'I cannot
apologise enough.' She then tried to, in some small way ,
fix the thing which obviously was a priority... the photo's.
I spoke to the driver, and the explanation
that it was ' an oversight' might not sound very plausible
or logical, but it is the only one we can give. The fact
that if we could turn the clock back we would is not valid,
as we can't.
Your reply was that you were insulted
by her efforts. I found it surprising that money
back would make up for your disappointment in any way.
Yes we could have tried to put a Rolls Royce there for you
if that would have pleased you.
I still do not know what you mean by
cortege.. that is a train of attendants or a procession of
mourners at a funeral (according to my Webster's
dictionary) ! A corsage on the other hand is a decoration of
flowers worn on the upper part of the body . There was never
any mention of flowers, only the 2 strips of ribbon, traditionally
used to show a wedding car. Where does this come from ??
My comments that this was not England
is a perfectly true and reasonable one. I have been here for
20 years, and have never had any satisfaction for cockups
made. It is not in the local ethos (or Very rarely)
I have spoken to the driver, and he
says that you paid £120 for the 2 and almost a
half hours and not the £150 that it would have
been for that time. He says that he is not willing to
refund the money. We work on a commission basis, and will of
course refund that to you , please let us know where you
want it.
You really should have taken it up
with him at the time was not meant (yet again) as a
suggestion that you should have 'had a row on your wedding
day' but you might have mentioned it ?. However, point
taken.
Everything we have said up to now has
offended you, and whilst I can certainly understand that you
were quite rightly disappointed, I do not understand the
comment that you can get no satisfaction from this, not this
way anyway. My last comment was ' I will see what the
driver wishes to do about it.' As far as I was
concerned, this was an ongoing dialogue. I am very sorry you
feel that way.
Yes I understand that you wish for
this to be publicised, and so have put up a web page for
complaints, thereby doing as you suggested would give you
some satisfaction.
Best Regards
Jayne
11th August 2008 We received a telephone call from a
lady in Akrotiri who said that the flowers she had delivered last
week were all dead and were we going to send compensation. I pointed
out to her that august in Cyprus is extremely hot and flowers do not
last, I get them directly from the wholesaler and if roses for
example last longer than 1 day I am doing well. That if one wants
something to last longer one should instead send a plant. She said
that we should warn people that flowers die in Cyprus and that it is
our responsibility to warn customers of this situation, so... we are
warning you both here, on the flowers and gifts page and on the
terms and conditions page ... flowers die in ovens. The word '
compensation' was mentioned many times, even after I explained
that we are a small company and any more flowers will not last any
better. But, as she obviously wishes to warn others:
**Please Note - The summer in Cyprus is very hot -
flowers do not last well unless the recipient has good air conditioning
or lives in a fridge - If they are likely to get upset when they wilt
and die, do not send them cut flowers, send a
plant instead. We do not give compensation for flowers that only
last a few days in August in a heat wave.
I have asked her to send in a letter or email, here it is
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 8:24 AM
God Morning,
I am absolutley disgsted with the recent telephone conversation I
have just had with Annalise. To expain.
A very good friend of mine has used internet from Afganastan to send
my family flowers using your florist, firstly the card was sent with
the wrong message and an email was then sent to Mr T. Ketcher
apologising and a phone call from Annalise was made to myself to say
sorry and and explanations of the correct message was relayed.
Secondly after 3 days and very good care these flowers all DIED, Yes
I know we are in Cyprus and its hot and flowers dont last as long as
the UK but like Annalise said on the phone to me this morning,
people should buy plants as they have a better chance of survival,
if she has told me this as I complain why not be a GOOD business and
tell your customers on purchase that this is the case and this is
what you recommend.
I think that as a gesture of goodwill you should not either replace
the flowers that are a total eyesore with a plant or other or
reinburse Mr Ketcher of the money you have charged him for these
pathetic goods.
I would appreciate some Management correspondence as soon as
possible.
Regards
Mrs A.L *******
Dear Sirs,
Further to my recent email I am still waiting for a reply to my
complaint, as a small business as you pointed out to me during our
telephone conversation I would think for your reputation you would
reply to these complaints as soon as you recieve them.
I am more disgusted now than I was with the attitude of the lady on
the phone.
I look forward to your imminent reply
Mrs AL *******Our reply is thus:
Dear Mrs. AL,
Thank you so much for you
letter, which has brought to our attention certain very helpful
issues.
We are sorry that you feel
our service did not meet your expectations and we have informed
the florist concerned that you are not satisfied with the length
of time your flowers lasted.
As your actual complaint
was rather nebulous, I have done my best to try and find out
what a reasonable life expectancy for flowers would be in a
climate such as ours, as this is something we think should
indeed be posted on the web site for those who are not aware
that flowers + heat = dried flowers.
I asked the florist who
made the bouquet and the delivery how long it is reasonable for
flowers to last , she said 2 or 3 days - then, because she may
of course have an axe to grind, I telephoned other florists and
regular flower users. Apparently 2-3 days with ordinary care
would be considered normal in an airy room, whilst one may hope
for up to 4 with air conditioning.
Athenouta Gardens in
Nicosia say 3 to 4 days, as long as you change the water daily
and don't trail leaves in the water.
Anoulagia Gardens in Paphos
said 2 to 3 days with care.
Arocaria Ayia Napa said 3
days as long as you change the water every day - they use bleach
in the water and keep the flowers in the fridge, they last for
up to a week as long as they are under 10 degrees, change the
water, feed with sugar and cut the stems daily.
Blungearaco in Nicosia
didn't reply (I will try again tomorrow)
There was one customer (an
English gentleman) who happened to be in one of the shops at the
time I called. He has been going to her for 15 years, he said,
2, 3 or 4 days, depending on the strength of the flowers.
Chrysanthemums are strong flowers and maybe last 4 days to a
week, but most will be 2 to 3 days. Mr George, who lives in a
strongly air conditioned house said that he gets about 5 days at
the max, as long as the A/C is on day and night where in the UK
he would expect 12 - 14 days.
The Grecian Bay Hotel
in Ayia Napa say that in the air conditioned public areas,
they may hope for 3 to 4 days before replacing them, and of
course they will get their flowers directly from the
wholesalers rather that going through a florist.
I was also told various
interesting things, such as for the care of cut flowers.:
1) Wash the vase each day
and fill with fresh, clean water
2) Cut a little from the
stems at a 45 degree angle, with a sharp scalpel or scissors,
preferably underwater.
3) Put a little bleach or
methyl bromide in the water
4) Put a little sugar in
the water
5) Keep out of direct
sunlight
6) Put them in the fridge
at night
7) Do not allow any leaves
to remain below water level
8) Be nice to florists
These tips will keep any
flowers you receive in the future in the best condition that can
be achieved.
As I think we have
ascertained that your flowers were not at all substandard, the
florist concerned is not interested in any gestures at all, but
as you say, as a gesture of good will, I have a lovely and
unusual cactus here which I will be very happy to give you
whenever you are in the Larnaca area. It is a biggie, and worth
about £250, it flowered this year with amazing purple flowers,
the first time in 9 years, it needs very little care and I am
sure will give you years of pleasure even if we have the drought
which is forecast for next year. I do hope you will like it and
accept it in the spirit of goodwill that you so rightly point
out is sorely lacking in today's rude and grasping society.
With Best
Wishes
Jayne *******
Manageress
Armata; PO Box 40218. Larnaca. Cyprus.
Tel + 357 24 665408
Fax + 357 24 627489
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