Appalling service from Church Street Cars/Dulwich Cars

[JPO]

Just had a very unpleasant experience with the Church Street Cars taxi service, which is very disappointing since we've been using them for over 6 years now but the service has really gone down hill lately, in my opinion.

They have stopped providing car seats and so for our recent trip to the airport we've arranged to use our own car seat and to then have the driver pick us up with it when we get back to the UK. Spoke to the female member of staff at the office the night before and confirmed that they will send the car with our car seat in it.

When the driver arrived, it turned out that he didn't bring the car seat since "someone in the office took the key from the cupboard with them" and so the car seat was still locked away. Now our 3 year old has never travelled in a car without a car seat and it's been drilled into her that it's very dangerous to do so. The journey from Stansted to Dulwich is not the shortest one so we were very uncomfortable about travelling so far without it. Called the office, got an excuse about the cupboard with no apology but a promise that it'll be delivered back to us asap.

Since Saturday gone we've had to contact them 3 times as there was no attempt made to contact us about this issue and every time we'd be promised that the car seat would be delivered "today".

When I tried calling them again just now the female member of staff who initially assured us that the car seat will be brought to Stansted proceeded to put it through as a journey that we would have to pay for.

When I protested she transferred me to an incredibly indifferent sounding male colleague who suggested that we either pay for it to be delivered or pick it up ourselves.

That's after an assurance from them that it will be brought to the airport, then a failure to do so, then almost a week of making us wait around for it at home.

To be honest, a very unpleasant treatment from someone we've used for years. The whole experience and journey left us very upset and disappointed. But the treatment after is even worse. With the amount of other taxi companies and Uber would it be so strange to expect at least some sort of basic service that doesn't put our child's life in danger considering that they are not just giving us a lift, but we are paying for it....

We've logged it with 101 service and the TFL complaints and we are out of a car seat....

[Sue]

That's disgraceful.

[JPO]

Thanks, Sue!

Like I said, the only reason why the car seat is still in their office is because THEY failed to pass it on to the driver who went to pick us up. However, they treated us as if they were doing us a favour by even speaking to us and we were an imposition, not their long-term paying customers.... All very silly to be honest, as we'll never use them again and have advised others especially families with kids we know not to use them.

It is a great shame to get this kind of treatment from a local business though...

[JPO]

The car seat was unexpectedly returned to us last night by one of the drivers, which was great.

[Sue]

But presumably you had to replace it already?

[Callie]

I've never heard of Church street cars they can't be the same as Dulwich cars that used to be based off east Dulwich Rd, I thought they got merged into the Keen Group.

[Russian Tuition]

It says on their website that Church Street Cars has merged with Dulwich Cars

http://churchstreetcars.co.uk

[JPO]

Yes! we actually ordered a new one as we didn't think we'd get the old one back, but we can return it now