jay trip- sometimes there really are only 2 seats left on the flight and me and the girlies at work cringe when we have to say it, because we know no one ever believes us-even when its true!,

No offence,but If the price is right I book it,but sometimes(usually a smaller company)add on lots of extras.I was very impressed with Thomson teletext in June as the price on screen was the price I paid.No TOD,CCC,transfers and 20kgs luggage allowance.

Early this year I booked a holiday for all the family ( 7 of us) on Eclipse website (part of First Choice) and paid the deposit. A few days later I looked on website and holiday had gone down in price by several hundred pounds. I rang them and explained I had noticed price had gone down, fully expecting them to say tough! (but thought nothing ventured nothing gained.) They reduced price of holiday straight away and sent out a new invoice for the new price. Can't understand why they did't do this for you...

Denny

Presumably because you only paid the deposit and not the full amount?

As for the original post, I think you just have to take it on the chin.

You may buy a £100 pair of jeans tomorrow, having been told by the shop owner its the last pair and they're selling well. In two weeks time, you'll maybe see the same jeans with a £40 in a promotion.

Its just tough in reality as much as anyone sympathises.

I'd never pay £100 for a pair of Jeans.

I am sorry but I agree that it is just bad luck that the price of this holiday has come down.
I think that if you are not able to put this behind you and just enjoy the holiday that you have paid for. Granted yes you have paid a bit more than you would have liked to. Your other option would have been to wait and then take what you could get 2 weeks or so before you travel.

On another note I do a lot of cruising and last year learned that some Cruise Companies will refund the difference if the cruise price comes down. RCI Celebrity Princess but this is unusual. You have to personally moniter the price and then get your TA to get the price drop for you.
Currently I booked a cruise for a friend for next year. The price has come down by £153 for her grade of room. She will lose some of the 11% discount the TA gave her.
I learned about this on the Cruise Critic message boards and thought it was just for the US passengers.

I have been on holiday numerous times where I have paid £400-500 and someone in the hotel has paid £199. Yes it is galling but this is the real world.

Sue

At the end of the day you are just miffed with yourself.
The company you booked it with doesn't need to offer you anything, they didn't force you to book it, you did .

If a holiday costs you £300 and you think its a good deal great.
If the same holiday drops in price to £200 thats tuf.
If again the same holiday goes up in price after you book it to £400, i cannot see you phoning them up and offering them the difference of £100.

Thats life.

Im not Miffed with myself at all - thats just talking stupid, have you not read my posts? Im miffed with them because although they have kindof admitted that I was misinformed, they are not willing to do anything about it. Am I miffed that I booked it when I did - no, because of what I was told about the flights. Am I miffed that the holiday was still available last week at a much reduced price at the time I would have been planning on booking it? Yes.

If whay I was told was correct, not only would it have been doubtful that I would have been able to book the holiday when I did, but there would have been no way that it still should have been available to book last Friday - about 5 weeks after there 'were no flights and would not be any more'

Im not disputing the fact that I was willing to pay what I did - because I paid it. What I am miffed about is that I wouldnt have had to if I had not been misinformed by them because there would have been no way I would have booked it at that time. THATS what I have an agrievance about, and THATS where you would think they would take some responsibility and do something to rectify the situation - no matter how small. Because they havent, their customer retention rates will reduce next year, and they have already lost out on one other booking for this year (my sister).

Dave, I am sorry you are still fed up! You say yourself in another post that you are not going to fall for the line the reps may give you, that if you don't book their excursions immediately, you will miss out. But you fell for that line with the TO? Your decision to not book with them in the future, I'm sure will only cause a very minor ripple in what is a huge pond, which I think is probably why you will not get any concession from them on this

Thing is the TO can only take your word for it that you would have booked later if you'd known there would be flights available. You say you originally phoned up instead of going online to see if there would be any extras given in the holiday but you didn't get as far as asking that because you were told there was no availability. So you are saying that you originally booked up with some intention on maybe booking if there were some freebies/upgrade type offers available - rather than waiting. Which is exactly what you did when you went online and saw that there was availability.

From their point of view you could just be trying on a scam. I don't really understand what gesture you are after getting because it seems to me that various staff were sympathetic towards your situation - surely that's a gesture in itself?

You say First Choice have lost a booking because your sister has booked with Thomsons. These two companies have merged so they still have your business.

I cant see why the person would lie to you about availabilitty and say there was none, surely he would want to make a sale. There are many reasons why one department might show no availability but online does show availability.

You have your preferred system of booking 2 weeks out ( I cant believe it is always cheaper this way or in fact if the holiday you want is still there although this does depend on the time of year you go ), why didnt you stick with this. If the holiday was still there then you could have booked, if wasnt there then you would still have been in the same boat of looking for an alternative.

You were hoping for a few extras to book over the phone, now you are complaining and think they should provide a few extras for misleading you. Your loss of business maybe not such a big issue for them.

Kind Regards
Stewart

i think first choice will lose some bookings next year they messed about some much with the flight only bookings this year, swapping and cancelling quite a few, i for 1 will never use them again after booking my flights in sept 06 for july 07 paying in full only to be cancelled around april time, they changed us to another airport miles away , changed my hol dates too cutting my holiday short by a day, so i wasnt impressed 1 bit, i knew they had flights from 4 airports nearer to my home, i got conflicting reports everytime i eventually got through to them sometimes took 30 mins, they lied to me and they refused to give us decent flights without paying at least £500 more, so to a degree i do sympathesis with you dealing with such bad company, i got no where trying to sort it out, so got a refund eventually not without a fight though,so sadly i dont think you will get anyway

Dave, again I know this isint what you want to hear, but you keep saying they incorrectly told you there was no flights available. As others have said, on the day you phoned maybe they didnt give you incorrect information, rather more flights became availabe from whatever source.

You then went on the internet and as you said yourself, went through with a booking that you thought wasnt available. At that stage of the game when you were asked to put your final details in...........I would have logged out, phoned the company, told them that not only were flights available but it was letting me book, and what were they going to do about it? At that stage they would have had to give you a definate answer..............and if they couldnt book it for you............you could either have argued the point or else hung up in disgust and went back and did your internet booking.

As it transpired you went ahead with the booking..............but you really dont know what information was available to the agent when they took your call the first time.

I honestly think you are being a tad unfair on the company here...............my daughter works for an on-line travel company (not yours!!) and said that extra flights can come up at short notice.

So .................rather than ruminate and get all bent out of shape about it and feel you have to spread the word getting your friends and family not to use them................couldnt you just look forward to the holiday you got and not feel that you have been taken for a mug.........because I honestly dont think you have. And as others have said, had you left it later you may not have got the holiday you wanted.................which would have been worse wouldnt it?

take care and have a brilliant time!

messed about so much with the flight only bookings this year, swapping and cancelling quite a few,

There are so many companies offering flights I suspect the problem is more to do with being unable to get the utilisation they need to make some of them viable.

The other problem which has been posted on HT before is that many flights advertised are done so before they are able to confirm the slots.

Not entirely the fault of the TO. I think many are offered in good faith.

The times are what they would like but if they are not successful in their bids for slots they have no choice but to change and cancel.

Remember it is not just a few flights from the UK. It is continental if not world wide, and that runs into many thousands .

they lied to me and they refused to give us decent flights without paying at least £500 more,

The point of contact is the person at the other end of the telephone. I am not involved but I feel comments that use the word "Lie" are unfair.

The person you speak with is only doing what they are told by senior management.

The fact that the statement they make to you comes across as a lie is more to do with them not being comfortable with giving a negative reply to your question or query.

I personally try not to take out my frustrations out on the person at the other end.

The person I am speaking to only works there

It is not their fault if the company fails to organise its operations efficiently or adopts policies they personally do not agree with.

I have no doubt that many of them are just as angry as you when told to reply in the way they do.

To go back to the original poster and the comments they make about the sympathy they received from the people they were dealing with.

Yes they do care and try to help, but if company policy says different there is nothing they can do.

fwh

well on this occasion i was told the first time i rang FC to say i wasnt happy with the new arrangements, that i could keep my original return flight from birmingham and then depart from east mids or change to gatwick which is nearer than manchester for us, at no extra costs instead of manchester which they had changed me too which is 2 1/2 hrs away. i told the FC telephone person i needed to talk to my hubby and would let them know later, i did this and when i rang back later that day they denied all knowledge of me being told this, said no way would i be told this and i would have to pay for every other flight except this manchester 1 i had been changed to , i asked for them to listen to the phone recording but they refused to do anything !! in my eyes this is lying ,this chap had obviously made a mistake with what he told me and FC were covering themselves simple as that, anyway thats another story, which we wont go into as its over with now .
so for this reason i dont think first choice are the easiest of companies to deal with, but i do agree with others if the price changes after you have booked something then thats unfortunate, we had a similar thing when i went to rebook this FC flight with sky bargains they told us book quick as there was only 6 seats left and if everyone from that cancelled birmingham FC flight needed seats we might get 1, so we did and then i also noticed they had seats right up to departure left and the plane wasnt full, they came down about £20 each but i wasnt bothered as i had my flights booked and that was more important to me after the carry on i had had with FC

Dave,

Don't tie yourself up in knots about this. Try to forget it, put it down to experience and start looking forward to a good time in your chosen destination. Your chances of receiving any monetary gesture, voucher or otherwise are nil.

Don't let it spoil your holiday and if you don't want to buy trips from your rep you don't have to. We don't force them on you.

Louise
Holiday Rep - not the company you booked with though.

Im not going to let it spoil the holiday, but that is the last money First Choice have and will get out of me.

Oh - my sister still hasnt booked anything but I spoke to her before and she said she is not going to use Thomson either. She isnt sure who they are going to use yet - they are going to sort it out this weekend.

What nobody seems to be grasping is that I am no longer going to be a retained customer. They are going to lose other customer aswell (my sister for one, and a few people in work said they wont use them either - one even said they would never use them again after their last time anyway). It may be a small amount of their turnover, but they have still lost more future profit than the £300 extra I needn't have paid - so in that respect I have won the moral victory. The fact that we would probably have used them for our holiday flights at least to Florida in a few years for my missus 30th - and there could be upto 20 people going, thats a fair bit of money there.

Regardless of any other circumstances, were you happy with the price at the time you booked the holiday?

If not, then why did you book it?

If yes, then why all the complaints? The price YOU paid hasn't changed so it's not like you have lost anything.

Perhaps the company could have offered some kind of gift or goodwill gesture but they really didn't have to. You can tell your friends and family about FC if you want to but I really hope you tell them the whole story and don't edit bits out because I can't see why they would take any notice of you when presented with the tale in its entirety.

FC do get a lot of complaints on this forum, usually right so. However, I think they have been hard done by this time.

Please read the posts that have already been put, especially mine and my replies before stating the same as someone else has done - because I have explained very clearely every circumstance. I really am beginning to lose patience with this particular thread now because of the same replies over again even though I have explained fully the reasons I am unhappy.

Yes I paid the price at the time, and was not exactly happy to pay that, but did because I was under the impression - after what I was told - that this would be the only chance I would get to book it. Do I not have a right to be upset because of why I felt I had to book it - because what I was told was untrue. There is 1 flight into and out of Liverpool per week, using Futura Airlines - there are no more at all and wont be so how could they obtain any other seats when there were none to obtain.

As for them not loosing any sleep over me and several others not booking with them in the future - I doubt the people who made the decision to upset me over this dont care, but I bet people higher up who actually have half a business brain would. Even if they had refunded me the difference (which I was not asking for or expecting) they would have made it back several time over from me over the next few years - whereas now thats not going to happen. This doesnt factor in that its not only myself who will not use them anymore, but potentially a percentage of the people I tell about it (which will be a lot of people). The revenue they will lose as a result of this is far greater than any gesture they could have made.

Its things like this that cause companies to eventually go bust. Research done in the early 90's, before the internet became what it is today, showed that if you pleased a customer they would on average tell 4 people about it, but if you upset them they would on average tell 10. The dawn of the internet has excalated these figures many times over.