A friend and I booked a holiday to Majorca through A1 Travel, departing at the end of August 2012. Upon arrival at the hotel, we were informed that they had absolutely no record of our booking and had not been taking bookings for months. The hotel said that they did not have any rooms and could not help us, but fortunately they referred us to the hotel next door who were able to accommodate us. The 'emergency number' we had been given by A1 Travel has very limited opening hours so this did not help us at all. We spent the first few days of our holiday involved in unhelpful telephone conversations with A1 Travel before they eventually resolved the situation. Having complained about the situation after our holiday, they took almost two months to be able to provide us with a response. Their response in the end was that they did not know why this had happened. They have refused to refund any of the telephone calls that I had to make whilst abroad.
We had an airport transfer booked for our return journey and we followed their instructions to contact the hotel reception 24-48 hours before our flight to find out the pick-up time. The transfer company had not contacted our hotel by the end of that time frame, so we had to contact them and found out that A1 Travel had booked the transfer for the wrong time. We then had to get a taxi to the airport, which cost us almost £70. I was informed by a member of their staff on the 2nd September 2012 that this would be refunded in full. To this day, almost four months later, despite numerous emails and phone calls to them, I am yet to receive this refund. I have now had to refer this situation to ABTA.
A1 Travel are the worst travel agents I have ever used. Their staff were unhelpful while we were stranded in Majorca and have continued to be even more unhelpful during my complaints after the holiday. I would advise anyone looking for a successful, easy and peaceful holiday to avoid them.
I have just had an unbelievable experience with this company, admittedly it was my own fault however I believe they are using underhand tactics. I booked a week in Tenerife at the beginning of this year. We carefully choose a destination we had previous been and picked different apartments. We also included airport transfers in our booking . Today I went on line to print my documents to discover they have booked us into a golf resort and had no transfers on form . Thought this would be a mistake as I did book them and decided to phone A1travel , they said they would check back on the system and phone back , they did call back stating we did in fact book this accommodation in an area we have never been nd we did not booked transfers . I told them that we did not and would not book a golf resort and that we paid 27 quid for transfers . The woman said the amount we paid was only for accomodation and if we want to change we have to pay 800 quid . I know I should have checked when email came in but I didn't , it's my own fault . I have a differing amount that came out my bank to my receipt so I can prove I paid transfers but it does not help me just now . Don't use this company !
Welcome to Holiday Truths! I hope you stay around and let us know the final outcome of this dispute but I'm not sure what you think is underhand about this? Mistakes can happen, quite genuinely, and that's why all TAs and TOs ask you to check the paperwork immediately and get back to them if there is a problem. Had you done this you might have got a different response from them and found them more willing to rectify the the situation at no cost to you?
We turned up at the hotel at midnight to find it closed for the winter. None of the emergency phone numbers worked and we basically had to find a 24 hour hotel and pay for it ourselves. Upon calling A1 travel the next day, they informed us that they did not have information that our hotel was closed. They did some checking and called us back and told us that we were to be moved to their sister hotel. This was 3km away from the centre of town. While the hotel was okay, the all inclusive deal was about as far from all inclusive as you could get with rules and exclusions as long as your arm and the food was really poor quality and so disgusting we had to just eat out. I don't eat fatty processed food at home so wasn't going to eat that on holiday. We were also so far away from the centre of town it was really quiet.
If we had known this in advance we would have tried to move to a different hotel. We ended up having to use all our spending money on food and drink, effectively paying for it twice. My partner got food poisoning also and spent a day in bed vomiting.
This was one of the WORST HOLIDAYS EVER and I am yet to find out what level of compensation they are going to provide after submitting my complaint.
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