It's 12:30 - that's half an hour after midnight - and I'm at Well House Manor to check in guests who phoned in to book less than an hour ago. I'm always wary about taking bookings this late of an evening as we can anticipate that people are just looking for a bed on which to lay there head, and don't want to have (nor to pay for!) facilities like the internet, the large screen TV, the unlimited soft drinks, tea, and coffee which are built into our standard rate. And indeed, this evening's late arrivals (whom I got out of bed to check in) suggested I charge an amount less than a half of our normal rate on the grounds that they would "only be in the room for six hours". I carefully explained that actually a single night booking costs us more as we have to do a complete room change, but Mr and Mrs X, looking for a room after a wedding when they had probably intended to go home were slightly grumpy about it - and that may mean that they don't treat the room with the usual respect overnight.

"Breakfast at about 9" they have requested, and Chris will be on well before that to cover the breakfasts for all the rooms that are taken ... I expect my concerns are groundless and I'll come back on line tomorrow and say "no worry" ... but at times the hotel business is a worry, and I think our general policy of closing for bookings at 9 p.m. each day is a sensible one; we loose a little business, but it's from customers for whom we're not ideally suited, and we gain peace of mind and a peaceful sleep.
(written 2008-10-12 00:30:23)

 G501 - Well House Consultants - Customer Service
  [2650] Getting a phone line changed ... - (2010-02-25)
  [2530] Taking a knock over Santa - (2009-12-08)
  [2258] Questions I have been asked on answering the phone - (2009-06-26)
  [2236] Alumni - revisiting and supporting the old University - (2009-06-13)
  [2124] Building down expectations - (2009-04-09)
  [2102] What do people think of our Apache httpd / Tomcat course? - (2009-03-24)
  [2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
  [2015] Service Excellence Awards - (2009-01-30)
  [1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
  [1985] Learning to program as a part of your job - (2009-01-10)
  [1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
  [1606] Sheep Shearers, Marathon Runners and Ocean Sailors - (2008-04-09)
  [1516] Pictures you can use - for free - from our library - (2008-01-23)
  [1446] An answer to a student asking 'Help' - (2007-11-27)
  [1434] Market survey - to learn, to prove a point, or to sell your product? - (2007-11-17)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1262] Keep in touch with PHP, Perl, Python and old friends too - (2007-07-09)
  [1046] Bounce, bounce, bounce - (2007-01-20)
  [1007] Friends and family - (2006-12-25)
  [966] CSL, KISS and RTFM - (2006-12-05)
  [961] Products that our customers want more of - (2006-12-03)
  [944] Just ******* Google it - (2006-11-25)
  [852] Eventful evening - a lesson in looking after contacts - (2006-09-02)
  [841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
  [725] Better communication - (2006-05-19)
  [717] A customer service company - (2006-05-11)
  [650] A person of few words - (2006-03-18)
  [628] Active Learning - (2006-02-28)
  [621] And the staff put the icing on the cake - (2006-02-23)
  [609] Been on a course, but still not got it? - (2006-02-16)
  [569] Instructions for bright people - (2006-01-19)
  [566] May all your screw-ups be big ones - (2006-01-16)
  [552] Keeping Customers Informed - (2006-01-02)
  [482] Different ways of selling - (2005-11-01)
  [440] Upgrade! - (2005-09-09)
  [393] Trainer answers phone - (2005-07-28)
  [350] Want to be one better - (2005-06-17)
  [327] How far should our support go - (2005-05-28)
  [265] Business practise, 2005 style - (2005-04-03)
  [233] Giving customers best value - (2005-03-02)
  [195] Customer service - examples to warn us - (2005-01-30)
  [189] Tuesdays and Fridays - (2005-01-25)
  [150] Confession - (2004-12-13)
  [126] Feedback shows the tip of an iceberg - (2004-11-22)
  [91] On line every 24 hours - (2004-10-17)
  [72] On Customer Service - (2004-10-03)

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23:30 bookings and midnight checkins
Seend, near Melksham, Wiltshire
Web Bloopers - good form design - avoiding pitfalls
Processing all files in a directory - Perl
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Caen Hill and Olivers Castle