Once again Belgium turned out to be drama. I’m not sure what it is about this sleepy little country that does it to me, but coincidences always seem to collude and conspire against me to create situations that lead to disaster, and this visit was no exception.
We decided to go to Antwerp on the spur of the moment on Saturday morning. Patrick and I had the rare opportunity of a free weekend with no plans, so to fuel his need for adventure we picked up a hire car and trekked down through e
Netherlands to Belgium.
The drive itself was uneventful, and as we’d used Expedia to book accommodation we followed Tomtom’s advice on how to get there.
Arriving at the location, called BE Condos we were a little surprised to find nobody at the reception desk, however after a few minutes of searching we discovered a sign telling us that the desk was only manned during normal office hours and to call a Belgian number at other times. Calling the number connected us to the building manager, and with a sinking feeling we heard that he didn’t have a reservation for us, hadn’t heard of either us or Expedia, and was totally full.
We were blown away of course – we had the confirmation of the booking, and had provided payment with a credit card, so weren’t leaving without a room, or at the very least a full refund. The guy started to get surly – I think he wasn’t a full time manager – probably just some guy getting cheap accommodation in exchange for basic servicing of the building facilities – and his lack of anything remotely like customer service skills showed.
His practice of leaving keys for guests at the reception desk with names on envelopes meant that our issue had one relatively simple conclusion; we’d paid for a room, and there were keys there, so we told the guy that wed take one of those. It only took about 30 seconds for him to come charging into the reception, snatching the envelope from us, and declaring that he would call the police if we didn’t leave immediately.
We showed him our reservation confirmation, but he still stuck fast to his position that he had no idea who we were, he had no reservation for us and we had to leave. Since we refused he (eventually) picked up a phone and called his area manager.
Marina (the area manager) was much more understanding and told us that the central reservations team must have made an arrangement with Expedia, as she also had not heard that reservations could be made that way. Since the location was indeed full there was nothing she could do there, but we had indeed paid, and they had other properties in Antwerp, so she promised to call the other place and get back to us in 5 minutes. To be on the safe side, now that we had someone who made sense on the phone, we also took her number.
After 15 minutes the local manager returned to the reception and told us again that we had to leave, and that he was going to call the police as he felt threatened (apparently sitting talking on the sofa was a threatening activity)! As we were legitimately waiting for a call back from
Marina we declined to leave, and so the guy (incredibly) actually called the police.
Fortunately we’d taken Marina’s number so we called her immediately. She was a little confused, and asked if the manager had provided us with the address of the other property where she had already arranged a room for us… (???!!!??!!!?). Clearly he hadn’t, and I told Marina that she was, perhaps, losing control of her manager here, and she gave us the address which went straight into the Tomtom.
Right as we were thanking Marina the police turned up, so I handed them the phone to have Marina explain the whole story. They could quickly see that the weirdo manager was wasting their time, and as we were clearly very calm and in general a little bewildered by the whole thing they let us head straight off and focussed on the guy, who by now was starting to talk loudly and rapidly to one of them.
We found the other building with no trouble, and as it turns out was literally around the corner from the place we wanted to visit that weekend, and so the little drama ended up saving us time and money in taxis over the weekend.
The second property had a lovely manager called Lillian, who was sweet and understanding – she didn’t erase the memory of the first guy, but did restore some of my faith in the organization.
The rest of the weekend was drama-free, but we are still wondering what the police said to the guy after we left…