General Holiday Enquiries, Hints and Tips

General Holiday Enquiries? Got General Hints & Tips? Post Them Here.
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Well I am pleased that I am not alone. Some time ago I wrote here on HT in answer to a question about exactly this. People constantly moan at the way they are treated by TOs, yet spend a great deal of time helping them to come up with new ways of parting us with our money. Yes I would be happy to pay extra for better seating. Yes I would be happy to pay extra to sit with the wife and kids. Yes I would be happy to pay for extra baggage. The list is endless.
Simply answer No to them all. Simply state in comments that the seating sucks and the baggage allowance is rubbish. Sit with the wife and kids? Well as I am the lead name and I booked it why should I not want to sit with the rest of my party?
Now if they asked if I wanted to pay extra not to sit with them they might be on a winner.

fwh
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Hi Sanji

I feel the same way you do about such things, what the heck does the name of my daily paper or whether I am single married got anything to do with my enjoyment of holiday, so I don't, now. I would however never give out details of my bank or financial status.

I would say however that I did once, when it was Airtours days, completed a questionnaire etc, and did tick the box to no contact. However several months later I was 'cold called' and as I have ex directory asked where they had my name and number they put onto their supervisor and told me from Airtours, I was fuming of course. The supervisor apologised and told me they would complain to Airtours, as did I, so no the 'tick box' to no contact does not always work.
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I do fill them in, as they pass a little time, but I only answer questions that are relevant to my holiday. I leave all the others such as income & insurance blank. I'm sure that's why I never win the free holiday :rofl :rofl
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They're a pain in the bum, IMO just a ploy to get people on their mailing list!!. Years ago I always used to fill them in hoping to get that "free holiday" :que I've never heard of anyone being that lucky.

If I ever fill one in I will tick average for everything. :really
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fwh, that made me laugh! i never fill in these things , whats it got to do with anyone else what paper i read, all they want to do is catagorised everyone, i also get a lot of phone calls at work asking thousands of questions about whether i stock this or that , how much turnover etc , at this point i go into fonejacker mode , that guy makes me crack up!
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In these situations I am happy to provide an address and postcode etc. However it is the address of a block of flats that I lived in with my parents. Said block was demolished in the 90's and so the poor postman will be clutching the circulars looking at a grassed over empty plot in the middle of Birmingham!
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I did fill in one of these recently. However, when I got to where it asked income and age, post code etc. I wrote "this is no of your business and this is why I hate these questionaires" and left the rest blank, but still handed it in.
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Me neither .Never fill them in . Only prize you're likely to win from those is an invitation through your letterbox for a credit card or quote for home or car insurance .

My elderly neighbour always used to reply to that type of junk mail by ripping the leter up into tiny pieces and sending it back in the postage paid envelope . Used to give him so much pleasure .
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I did fill it in once on the plane. A First Choice one. What was I thinking. I had been ex-directory for 23 years at this point and never got nuisance calls.

This was the only source of information that my phone number could have come from and in the last 4 years I have never been able to get rid of nusiance phone calls despite TPS. All down to filling in a FC questionnaire, I would rather cut my arm off than fill in one again, they have passed (SOLD) my details on to the world. :rage

Queing at the gate to get back on the plane at Malaga in the summer, the airport were letting a couple of 'researchers' AKA pains in the butt, wander up and down the queue trying to get us to enter a 'prize draw' for which we had to give them a ton of details. I said to her you are only doing this to spam me to death but she was a smart mouth and said we dont ask for your email, so I said how do you inform us if we win then ? She just walked off. :rofl Don't think anybody else was daft enough to give it either from what I saw.

PS Loved the article Sanji, chopping radish in a freezing gite :rofl 11 miles from a French farmer.
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By means of this forum, do you think we can find anyone who has, or knows someone who has won the free holiday? (Bearing in mind it's one free holiday each season, from all the flights used)
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That's a good idea Mobor one. Well, it's not me. I haven't won any holiday with all the questionaires I've filled out over the years :(
I've stupidly been filling in all the details (apart from household income and the insurance questions). Over the last month, I've been getting clothing brochures/catologues from companies I've never even heard of and I think it's all to do with this summer's questionaire. Stupidly said I enjoy fashion. I think I've learnt my lesson.

I will continue to fill in the details relevant to the holiday as I feel it's important for the companies to get feedback (assuming they do take notice), but will definitely be leaving all other questions blank.
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Each of the companies return the results to each resort at the end of each month. The feedback given affects resort teams pay, winter work and hotels/apartments look for ways to improve based on the results. You'll be surprised just how useful the holiday information can be. I agree that some of it is complete nonsense, but the reps and resort teams find them invaluable tools to try to improve things and maintain standards.

If memory serves me correctly, when i worked in Cyprus, one of the reps had a voucher "winner" in their hotel, they promptly had a nightmare holiday! Wonder what the compensation for that one would be...
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We travel quite a bit and the questionaires are a pain but we do enter what we feel is relevant but never anything to do with our personal details.
The Reps we meet in the hotels tell us that it is important for them as the feedback does gets back to them and that is the only reason we do just the few pages.
We always say to them that we wish we could write our comments in the hotel direct as guests could have had a fantastic holiday but by the time they reach the airport and could experience excess baggage charges, flight delays etc, by the time they are on the plane, all that could be forgotten so the questionaire might not be so favourable!
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:wave: just back and filled it in as the prize was a box of choccs!! they announced the row and seat number before people got theirs handed in!!!!!bit of a swizz
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beermat wrote:
:wave: just back and filled it in as the prize was a box of choccs!! they announced the row and seat number before people got theirs handed in!!!!!bit of a swizz


Ekk !whats happened to the free holiday then ?

Bit of a cheek getting all that valuable information from people on the strenght of a box of chocs !!!

Was it First Choice beermat ?
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I fill in the holiday bits and also have a tip. If you read, say, The Sun, tick that you read the Daily Mirror. You will then (even if you ticked the box!) receive lots of money off coupons for the Sun.Likewise the Mail/ Express.I've had half price papers for a long time now!
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i dont fill in the forms either. why do they want to know how much our income is, and what credit cards we have?
Maybe this is so they can sell our information to people?
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We've DIY'd our holidays for the past gawd knows how many years and this is why I Iike flying with Easyjet - you don't get any of that c**p. ;)

Mind you we've just booked a First Choice tour of Cuba next year so I may have some fun filling it on on the way back. My name - Richard Branson, my address - Nectar Island, my income - millions, Ah, it may be the highlight of the holiday... :)
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