Ditched and Golden Helicopter Awards to Hilton Hotels

In October, it was The Professional Speakers’ Association Annual Convention and it was held at the Hilton in Coventry over 3 days. On arrival a number of my colleagues found that there was no soap in the rooms. They went to the reception and said, “There is no soap in our rooms,” to which the reply was, “No, that’s correct,” “What are you going to do about it?” they asked and the response was, “They missed the delivery and there won’t be another one till Thursday.” They were then asked whether there were shops in the area where they could buysoap and were told that they weren’t allowed to do that.
A colleague of mine Alan Stevens then Tweeted about what an appalling situation it was that there was no soap in the rooms in a major hotel and also that the charges for Wi-Fi internet access were extortionate. 2 hours later he had an email from Hilton Hotel’s head office in the US apologizing for this situation and half an hour later the soap was delivered and indeed all the delegates in the convention received soap and free Wi-Fi access!
Hilton apparently monitor Twitter 24/7 – do you?
Whilst this was a quite unacceptable situation that we found, I am a little reluctant to give Hilton just a Ditched Helicopter Award since they excelled themselves in correcting of the situation so I think what I’ll do is give them one of each, a Ditched Helicopter and a Golden Helicopter Award goes to Hilton Hotels.

Golden Helicopter Award to MD2MD

MD2MD run CEO groups around the country providing “the board you can’t afford” particularly for Managing Director Owners of Small and Medium Businesses. I regularly speak for them and they are a delight to do business with. Most recently I ran 4 workshops for them in Leeds, Manchester, Banbury and Maidehead and when I came to send them my invoice, this time they absolutely excelled themselves!
I emailed them my invoice and an unbelievable 3 hours later the funds were in my company bank account. An experience I will talk about again and again.
I am very happy to give a Golden Helicopter Award to MD2MD

Golden Helicopter Award to Interparcel.com

Interparcel.com are not just a comparison site for couriers but in addition have buying power with those couriers so their prices are significantly lower than the couriers themselves. Their site is exceptionally easy to use and I had the wonderful experience of spending no more than 20 minutes on a Thursday booking in my parcel to go to Dubai, it was collected later that afternoon and amazingly I had word from that it had arrived on the Sunday.
This is how the service industry should be and I am more than happy to give a Golden Helicopter Award to Interparcel.com.

Ditched Helicopter Award for FedEx

I recently needed to ship a number of my books to Dubai. Fortunately, I started out by Googling “Couriers to Dubai” and discovered interparcel.com where I could enter details of my package and they then come up with the cheapest option. This was £63.40 with FedEx.
So I then packed up the books, went onto the FedEx website only to find that you first needed to set up an account, which I completed and they said an agent would call within 24 hours to get it all organized. Sure enough a few hours later I got a phone call who asked details about me and my company and she said, “You don’t need an account if it’s just a single shipment you’re making you can just do it straight through the website.”
So I then went on the website only to find that you DID need an account so I called them and a very robotic person told me that, “Yes, the only way you could ship in this situation was to do it through her over the phone,” so I thought, “Okay” so we went through the process until we got to the end when she told me the price would be £101.50!
I told her that I’d been quoted £63 and she said, “Oh that must be by Inter[parcel or Parcel2Go, they’re much cheaper than we are.” “But it is still FedEx that they’re shipping through,” I said “Oh yes but they’re much cheaper than us. Would you like to go ahead?” “Why would I want to go ahead with you if I can get it significantly cheaper elsewhere?” to which the reply was, “I don’t know.”
This was really a poor experience, there must be a better way of FedEx handling this situation both to their benefit and their customers’ benefit and as a result this month FedEx get a well deserved Ditched Helicopter Award.