excessively early Tristar pickup

never had this problem previously but when booking my car pickup for the 7:35 Little Red out of MAN, which is an hour's drive from home, the latest time they could pick me up was 4am - 3.5 hours before the flight :0

they insisted this could not be moved so I cancelled & arranged my own pickup an hour later at 5am which I know will still get me to MAN with 1.5 hours to spare

Did they say why?

You are right that is really unusual. For a cab company (they will probs try to kill me for calling them that) to dictate when it is convenient for them to pick you up.... ha ii)

Said that it was down to what their system was telling them was the minimum transfer time.vi even tried calling a few days later to see if there was any change.

Huh, thats odd... Their system does have a recommended time for pickup but never had any trouble with picking my own - they do point out over and over again though that they are not liable if you miss your flight.

Will keep an eye out in future in case this is reflective of a policy change, cheers for the heads up y)

[Darren Wheeler]

Could it be that the Tristar system isn't fully aware of Little Red and assumes you are on a Orlando/Barbados flight and sets the time accordingly?

sounds feasible darren. As predicted my car company got me door to door in just over an hour this morning

Could it be that the Tristar system isn't fully aware of Little Red and assumes you are on a Orlando/Barbados flight and sets the time accordingly?

Perhaps they are programmed by default to predict long haul all the time, but the Tristar rep on the phone should have grasped this and accepted a later pickup! I constantly travel outside of their recommended pick up times and have never had an issue before. Odd

Good to hear all went without issue y)

As a rule of thumb, when do tristar confirm booking. Using them for the first time on Monday.

As a rule of thumb, when do tristar confirm booking. Using them for the first time on Monday.

When you book in the first place an email pops on through if booked with them directly. If on a CDC arranged by VS, then the VS agent takes all the booking info, but no confirmation email pops through. Tristar usually call me a few days beforehand to make sure I am still ok for the pickup time and place, driver instructions etc.. - I am known to them though so this could be just good customer service.

If you are looking to confirm things Sam, my advice would be to simply give VS a call and prepare yourself for 'Holiday' by Madonna

If you are looking to confirm things Sam, my advice would be to simply give VS a call and prepare yourself for 'Holiday' by Madonna

lol that produced a smile y)

David

I think va probably does have the worst a) quality and b) selection of holding music!

[Darren Wheeler]

I think va probably does have the worst a) quality... ...of holding music!

Quality has very little to do with the actual music being played.

Phone lines, both fixed and mobile, are optimised for voice only. To maximise the available space, filters are used for anything outside of normal speech. The upshot is that music sounds awful with frequencies missing, gaps and the vocals like the worst ever X-Factor entrant.

Selection usually comes down to cost of rights etc.