Richard Setters had his fancy dress costume for a birthday bus party, but was disappointed when the company had to cancel it at the last minute. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 0623310)
IT IS often the case that you wait all day for a bus and three turn up at once. But for Richard Setters, none turned up at all.
The 23-year-old, who contacted the Guernsey Press this week, revealed how he had booked a bus party with Guernsey Chauffeur Drive for a joint birthday on Friday 1 August.
He and 35 guests were in fancy dress at the Thomas de la Rue pub, waiting for their bus to turn up, when five minutes before they were due to leave, a woman from the company came and told them it had been cancelled.
‘Obviously we were pretty disappointed with the service we had received from them,’ said Mr Setters.
‘But I suppose it was just trying to make the best out of a bad situation and trying to find something else to do.’
The bus had been booked three weeks earlier and a £60 deposit paid. Mr Setters has still not had that back.
Instead of ruining the evening, the group decided to do a pub-crawl round Town.
‘We still had a really good night as we had a big group of friends so the night wasn’t a complete waste. But it would have been more fun with the bus.’
Mr Setters said that although the company didn’t have much notice that the licence had been revoked, he said it would have been better if he could have been told a few hours before, rather than a few minutes.
Guernsey Chauffeur Drive had its licence taken away by the Environment Department at the end of June for several contraventions of the law, including not displaying a public omnibus plate on the rear of the vehicle.
Director Terry Le Maitre said that he had only received a letter the day before the bus party telling him that the licence had been revoked. ‘For some reason we didn’t have a contact number or an email address for the booking, so we sent somebody to the de la Rue,’ said Mr Le Maitre.
He said that any deposit would be refunded as has been done with all other cancelled bookings.
Article posted on 18th August, 2008 - 2.29pm
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