There comes a
time in every company when a supplier manages to shatter all the carefully laid
plans. On this occasion, two flight cases had been entrusted to an
international shipping company for delivery to a client at an hotel in Barcelona.
The client had insisted on a Saturday delivery and the shipping company
confirmed that they could do it.
This broke two
rules: avoid Saturday deliveries and avoid deliveries to major hotels because
you never know where the kit will end up. We once had a printer delivered to a
hotel in Germany which was commandeered by the hotel’s IT department when it
arrived. They assumed that the hotel’s head office had sent it and it took two
months to track it down. However, in the Barcelona case the client was
insistent so the delivery was arranged.
It was very
quiet over the weekend but by Monday the client was calling, saying that the
first flight case had arrived but wanting to know where the second one was. It
took several hours of effort to track it down. By mid-afternoon, we had
established that it had been too big to go on the shipping company’s conveyor
belt in their depot so it was still sitting in the loading bay about 40 minutes
from our offices. We had a few robust conversations with the shipping company’s
managers but they would not guarantee delivery the next day for several
reasons, including the fact that it was a national holiday in Spain.
So we were in
a situation where the event started at nine o’clock the next day and the
shipping company was refusing to get the flight case to Barcelona in time and
no courier was prepared to guarantee delivery. There was only one option:
somebody from the office would have to get it there.
The nearest
that we could get to Barcelona by air from Birmingham that evening was
Alicante. The flight landed at around 23:30 so our man rented a car and began
the 350 mile drive from Alicante to Barcelona.
He
arrived at the venue at 06:30 so was outside the conference office with the
flight case when the client came down to begin work for the day. Fortunately,
we managed to book a flight home from Barcelona so our man did not have to
drive all the way back to Alicante.
Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
