Our new house – nuestra casa nueva en espanol.

Although firstly a great big thank you to Lorraine for last week‘s effort.

For anyone who missed it there was a host of useful information on how useless UK utility providers are.

Don’t get me wrong. Spain is not necessarily a Shangri-La but we’ve not enough experience to compare it with the known customer service experience of the UK.

I’ve said before but maybe not in these posts that if a company has a customer service department it’s a foolproof way of working out that they have not got a clue.

I’ve never consulted for a business large enough to have one but I do have a few possible ideas:

• you pay peanuts you get monkeys – unfair on monkeys really but if your customer facing staff are the poorest paid in the business, don’t be surprised if they are incompetent.
• your metrics are wrong – if you measure success on throughput rather than successful outcomes for your customers, you encourage your staff to get rid of calls as quick as possible.
• you’ve outsourced to the wrong place – especially when dealing with customers who have any sort of disability, such as deafness, using staff who are not native language speakers can easily alienate.

Or all of the above.

I have a lot of sympathy for foreign call centre staff trying to deal with people who have “issues” and cannot comprehend your accent.

I also have one funny case where I was convinced I was dealing with India when the lad informed me he was going to transfer the call to his supervisor. Who was ‘just down the road’ in Skelmersdale. Merseyside/Lancashire UK for those without a good geographical knowledge. So no, not always quite what it seems.

But the one I witnessed my wife and daughter dealing with last week was definitely nowhere near the UK.

Real Alcazar, Sevilla – bit bigger than our new house but hey!
Image by Charlemagne from Pixabay.

One of the well known hotel consolidators is outsourcing their call centres to – we think – the Philippines. When the operative was conversing with her supervisor the dialogue spilled over onto what should have (probably) been a muted call.

And daughter, she of the language ability, reckons the conversation we overheard was in Tagalog.

Which word, amazingly, is in the spellchecker…

Which brings me to our long weekend break.

So we haven’t even been in our new house a week when we’re away for a break.

Which was what the phone call above was all about.

The Spanish hotel industry has been in a state of virtual hibernation since the first lockdowns.

The first hotel we booked was supposed to be opening but then was not and asked if we could transfer our booking to a sister hotel?

Which we were unable to do as the other hotel was a lot further away from the touristy bits of Sevilla (note correct spelling).

So we transferred the booking to another hotel group.

As the original booking had involved redeeming free nights for one of the rooms the girls made the phone call to the Philippines or wherever.

Then they contacted us to say they wished to transfer our booking to a sister hotel – but this one was within a kilometre of the first and still close to all the attractions.

So we accepted and, despite a few trepidations, set off to Sevilla on the Friday.

Daughter and Mr Daughter were heading from Gibraltar to La Linea to Algeciras to Sevilla by bus/coach.

We were going bus/coach from Estepona to Malaga then high speed train to Sevilla via Cordoba.

So Friday morning saw us walking to the coach station. From our new house.

It would have been walk-able from the rental but starting from here removed 10 minutes and one of the hills.

It also highlighted that the non-revolving wheel on our small suitcase meant I had to carry the !*!* thing the whole way.

And the whole way back. And gives rise to a decision to get a new one.

A glance at an atlas will show the other two did something approximating to two sides of a pentagon. Whereas we did the other three sides to get there.

Starting off in a diametrically opposed direction to our final destination.

The main reasons being (a) the way the high speed line goes and (b) someone has dumped a large range of mountains in the way of the direct route.

The Cordilleras Beticas to be exact.

Second highest range of mountains in Europe after the Alps.

Highest peak Mulhacen at just under 3,500m (apologies to any Spanish readers for my lack of accents, here and above).

I told you you get to learn “stuff” with these posts…

Took them around three hours of travel, three and a half hours for us.

Plus waits, etc,. etc.

And we finally all get to Sevilla.

We were talking to the receptionist at the hotel. She told us it was the first DAY they had been open in fourteen months…

So please make allowances.

Not that we needed to, the place was spotless and the staff were lovely.

If I had a criticism? The rooms were a touch ‘bijou’ so it was difficult to sit comfortably at the desk and read – books and/or emails.

Our impressions of Sevilla?

It was hot.

End of May and temperatures at around 35C or above.

I believe it was unseasonably warm but it certainly gets this hot in the heights of summer.

The list The Flyaway Girl had produced of places of interest proved – as is the norm – “ambitious”!

I think the list had around 15 items and we managed a grand total of 2-3 per day.

If you visit, and you go to the Real Alcazar (Royal, not as opposed to imitation – come on, I can’t have been the only one who noticed the football team Real Madrid and wondered if there was an Unreal one), do not even think you’re going to do it in an hour.

Or two, or three.

The place is massive, fascinating and the route marked out tries to ensure you don’t miss anything.

Hence finding a shortcut to the exit was nigh on impossible. Certainly without the assistance of a nice security guard.

Still, reason enough to go back and do it again.

And a note for myself for next time – all the craft beer bars (bar one) shut on Sunday. No idea why…

Here’s to a return to Sevilla and the Alcazar, Real or not.

Because of UK bank holidays we got to stay until the Monday.

Returned the same way, only in reverse obviously. And as it was 19.00 when we got back, took a taxi rather than walk back to our new house.

With the suitcase with the non-working wheel.

Certainly nice to get back to our new house. And the temperatures in Estepona are around 10 degrees cooler than inland.

One outcome of the weekend away was to highlight just how knackered we both are.

So high level decision time and the firm is taking a week off the week after next. A week doing bu99er all with maybe a day trip to Marbella thrown in.

A time to recharge the batteries.

And even to get to know our new house.