Delivering results in sometimes challenging circumstances
Replacing someone’s keys or delivering a replacement Renault key card is not always as easy as it may seem. You would think that a potential customer would call you, discuss the options, make a booking, give you their address and boom – job done.
Nothing further from the reality. Sometimes scheduling a booking takes all logistical skills you can imagine. From finding the location of the vehicle to scheduling a time convenient both for the customer and you.
After a recent flurry of peculiar bookings, I decided to share some stories with you, sit back and enjoy.
First story is about a young gentleman who was having a wonderful time in pub (yes, a pub, at some point they were still open), had one too many pints and annoyed the wrong type of punters. To cut the long story short, one of the pub goers took away his Megane key card and drove off with his car. After few hours of fun ride, the car was dumped in the middle of nowhere and the key card ended up in the nearby stream. The fact that the lad was a bit hungover did not helped with finding the vehicle, in the end we had to incorporate a drone in the search of the abandoned car. After about half an hour of spectacular views we were able to locate the car. It took us another 15 minutes to get there by foot as there was no way of driving there without damaging our vehicle.
Once we got there it was fairly easy, I say fairly as we had to go though fields, jump over a stream and go through all sorts of other obstacles. We have programmed a replacement key card and helped to push the car over to a little lane dividing the fields.
Next interesting location we had to attend was a police compound. Fiat 500 got stolen and recovered by the police. To add insult to injury the car belonged to a policeman on duty. I could not believe the scale and the number of cars recovered by the police that night. It was absolutely mind blowing. One night more than 30 cars had been stolen and recovered by the police, all of this in Swindon. We had pre cut the replacement key for Fiat 500 as the owner had the key code in his service book. Once we arrived, we were thoroughly checked and given access to the vehicle. The programming itself took only 10 minutes and we were ‘free to go’.
Another customer in need of our help was a gentleman stranded in the middle of Snowdonia. Again, if it wasn’t for modern technology we would not get there. The customer kept sending us updated locations using an app on his phone, none of the sat nav devices we had were able to locate a viable route, so we had to depend on the location updates and our IQ and sense of direction. The owner of the Renault Espace in question had taken a trip to Snowdonia to relax and unwind. While hiking his Renault Espace key card fell out of his pocket and was nowhere to be found. The car was parked just by a lovely waterfall, we had to lock-pick his locks to get into the car, once the vehicle was opened it was just a matter of programming a replacement Renault key card. Needles to say the customer was over the moon as he would be stranded in mountains for God knows how long not to mention his car being left in unsecured location with potential of somebody finding the lost key card.
We had some more interesting bookings and location we had attended to, but I think I will leave it until next entry. What is the moral of the story? Simple – we hare there where you need us the most. No matter, snow, distance, weather, location we are there to help.
