Just to report I had a nightmare with Deckchair a couple of months ago. I was going to let sleeping dogs lie, but I still feel so strongly about the matter I had to make the horror story public. Back in the Summer I agreed with my elderly mother it would be nice to visit my brother in Lisbon to visit his six month old twins over Christmas. With some months notice I thought we would get a good deal and duly shopped around to find Deckchair.com appeared to offer the best deal at £151 return per person.

Unfortunately I then asked my ma to make the booking as I knew she gets free travel insurance on her particular debit card. Bad mistake. She rang deckchair up within minutes of getting the £151 quote and had the flight verbally confirmed. However some hours later the customer services representative rang back to say there "had been a mistake" and that the flight wasn't actually confirmed for £151. She was then quoted £184 which she agreed to. Only to be rung the next day to say it couldn't now be confirmed for that price and that the price was actually £196. Guess what? A day later, my 76 year old mum was rung to say the price would be increased to £276 (!!!) unless she agreed for us to move to an early morning flight.

Virtually in tears at this point she agreed to the flight change (much more inconvenient for both of us) only to later bitterly regret not bring all this to my attention before she agreed to it all. I for one would have told Deckchair.com where to stuff their flight but the damage had already been done by the time I found out. Needless to say customer services were IMPOSSIBLE to contact...obviously they had got their money and didn't give a damn about extorting increasing amounts of money out of an elderly lady.