Through customs, smooth, out to the shuttle bus and into the city, so beautiful and clean.
And here we are at the Quadrant Hotel and Mrs Foggy is happy with a mountain of brochures (geek).
Next stop several hundred miles of trekking.
Downside Up from here.
And now a 2 hour wait in what can only be described as a dirty Heathrow lounge with 3 women who give you an orange card but don’t tell you were to go or what to do! It’s 7.30pm Sun 22 Jan in LaLa Land time or 3.30am Monday 23 Jan UK time and I have no idea what pose Mrs Fogg is doing or why.
Next stop Auckland.
We have been PROCESSED from here.
Mrs Foggy decided to replace her camera with a slightly better one with a zoom for whale watching.
So 1 hour left, just time enough to buy sleeping pills. We land into Auckland at 7.30am NZ time on Tuesday morning (which is 13 hours ahead of the UK).
Se y’all in a wee while and keep reading.
Leaving on a jet a Jet Plane from here.
These are the proposed seats for the flight, the romantic “Space seats” where one of the party gets to slob all over the other (lets guess who is gonna be the slobber and who will be the slobberee).
If you wanna see what these seats look like go onto that there uhu tube and search for Air NZ space seats.
The downside, 27 hours of TV entertainment from the early 90s, with films to match. It’s gonna be a long long flight.
Spending the night here.
Timings marred only slightly by Mrs Fogg faffing as women do and having to put a HMRC cheque in the bank (yes I am one of the lucky ones). Now Mrs Fogg has warned me to put out a whinge alert before I start, so here goes, Grumpy Gus rant time (you have been warned).
I got a lovely cheque from Mr Tax Man with a note that stated the details of how we arrived at this figure will be sent under separate cover (efficient use of money there). Well I was quite surprised (err not really), to see the cheque didn’t match the details, so a 45 min wait on the phone ensued (listening a constant reminder that all of my questions can be answered online, I bet not). Eventually through to a Hooman (loose term). “hi sir how can I help”, well it’s about, “let me guess you have a refund cheque”, yup. “and the figures don’t match”, yup, “well you’ll be about the 100th person I have spoken to today”, ok, “the problem is we are sending out information, but leaving some off”, well that’s not very good, “I know, but at least you could tell the difference between a refund and a demand, unlike the 99 others I have spoken to”. Happy then. Cheque duly banked and then I get my payslip which shows a refund from the nice taxman for approximately the same amount. Great so I have gone from being owed money by the tax man to owing money within seconds, oh well.
So whinge over (it was a mini one), we made it to the CaddyFrogs late, to see a fantastic brekky spread (youse guys). Farewells said it was off to the airport, no traffic, empty car park and empty terminal, wow.
Next stop that there Nodnol (Red Dward fans should be able to work that one out), to chill before the 27 hour mammoth flight, are we looking forward to that, Nooooooo.
Just a small amount of luggage to pop in the car……
Of course we now only have four and a half hours kip before we start off on another adventure.
Now did I pack enough shoes, tee shirts, socks? hmm, might have to wedge in a few more.
[Posted from Mrs Foggs super cool iphone]
Are we sitting comfortably, then I will begin, on the 8th Jan we went hunting for trolley bag cases (not a suitcase, but not a rucksack), eventually finding what we wanted in a Fenwicks store, but they only had one and the spotty yoof really couldn’t be bothered looking in the store room (would spoil his hair do), so the “I’m sorry that’s the last one we have sir” as he promptly turned to chat up the stick girl next to him. Ah well, your loss, tinterneweb here we go.
Mrs Fogg in full on search mode, quidco ing and boggling as she does found what we needed and duly ordered them. The money went out of our account instantly and the said company (Luggageexpress don’t touch em with a barge pole.co.uk) updated the status to “processing”. Mrs Fogg even added a note stating “please advise earliest delivery” and paid for next day despatch.
Four days went the status still showed “processing” and still silence. We phoned their 0800 which diverted to an Orange Mobile and then stated the mailbox was full, uh oh! Bells of the Alarm type sounded, scams ville here we come.
All calls either went to a full Orange Mailbox, or to a person of foreign sounding persuasion “yor cawl maye bee record for train porpoise” . Ding Ding, Ding.
Emails fell into a black hole and this company seemed to not exist, so we contacted our oh so helpful an friendly bank. After pressing the usual, 5 for accounts, 6 for credit card, 2 for assistance, 3 to hear static, 9 to return to start, I eventually spoke to a pleb (hi you are through to Jane, I need to ask you some irrelevant security questions before I can pass you to my colleague who will ask the same questions). Ah sir thank you you have passed security however this is a credit card matter so let me put you on hold before you can even think about saying another word. Credit Card Pleb, security, yaddah, yaddah (you get the idea). Long story short, no you can’t claim this as a fraudulent activity since the card was in your possession at the time of purchase. But no goods received, no communication, nada, surely it’s fraud, nope it’s a “dispute”, ah but still fraudulent, nope, this way we send you a form in 7 to 10 days and then take up to 3 months to achieve an outcome, super!
As you will see from the great TROLLee Hunt we found something last week and promptly sent emails to the company demanding order cancellation and full refund.
Well knock me down with a feather as the ordered bags turned up yesterday, no delivery note, no explanation, no apology. Mmmm reading the Luggageexpress website (stating fantastic made up reviews and feedback), the product is still processing, so can’t be returned, but to return it you need a returns number from the company who doesn’t respond. We called, we sent snottograms, and yet squat of the diddly type was returned.
Oh Well we will just send them back under the sale of goods act cooling off period, yes, but where to, no address? One last ditched attempt to call them again and bugga me with a rusty pole, some foreign gentleman answered called “YouCanCallMeJimmy”. I tried to recount how cack they are as a business but suddenly dawned on me that the extended silence meant YouCanCallMeJimmy wasn’t listening. Eventually after spelling RMA to Mr Foreigner, I got a number and an address, phew, now all we gotta do is get our money back, what are the odds?
And the title of this tale “What has Antlers but no Head” is because they were Antler bags (geddit), but I do get to tell my world famous jokes:
– What do you call a deer with no eyes
– No eye deer
– What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs
– Still no eye deer
– What do you call a deer with no eyes, no legs and no genitals
– Still no F***in eye deer
Boom Boom (I shoulda been on the stage, sweeping it)
Sitting here watching the stars (and Jupiter) whilst supping mugs of mulled alcohol (you can mull anything cider, Asahi, coffee, yuck) waiting for all of our receipts and confidential crap to go up in smoke, whilst Mr Spike does a double check for me.
