I spent over 40mins clearing the frost as I didn't want to take any chances
Where they not able to provide some de-icing fluid? 40 mins sounds like quite a long time to clear frost...
If it makes you feel any better I have a similar cold weather frustration to share; yesterday morning I decide at quite short notice to fly to Inverness, stay the night at a nice hotel etc with my girlfriend and come back in the next day. Things were going too well when we arrived back at the aircraft this morning...I was looking forward to making a really quick getaway!
Unfortunately it was not to be. First off the aircraft was covered in frost, it had been about -10 degrees during the night. Borrowed a step ladder so I could get to the top surface of the wings and clear it all off...this took about 20 mins. Then when I went to start the thing it just didn't want to, the cold had drained the battery (at first I thought the starter might be frozen which thankfully turned out not to be the case). Thankfully some really helpful guys from Highland Aviation were around. We dragged the aircraft round to their hangar, then it turned out they didn't have a 24 volt charger, eventually borrowed one from Dalcross Handling after HA kindly phoned around the airport to find one for us, charged it up and finally were on our way about four hours later than I had originally intended!
If Neil from Highland Aviation is reading this...thanks again for your help...
I sometimes find light aircraft intensely frustrating, things seem to take for ever, snowball into each other, seemingly routine issues become problems...ice, fuel, tech issues, security, this, that and something else...one just has to try and not let things wind one up.
It does sound though like presenting you with an aircraft that needed 40 mins of frost clearing and then telling you that you only had 15 mins left before someone else needed the plane is very unprofessional.