I have to agree with your sentiments.
The fact is though, the Rep of today is worked like a dog,and ( believe me) its a great challenge at times to remain the happy smiling face of the company you represent!!
Over the course of a season ( im not a rep by the way) i deal with hundreds if not thousands of British tourists and, at times, i have to work bloody hard to maintain my cool, i have to, its my job.
Im not making excuses for them, fact is most tour operators have slashed the number of reps there used to be. Most coaches dont even have reps on board anymore, an expense the tour company doesnt feel is necessary.
By all means be angry with the guy ( i would have been) but remember he isnt out here living the dream as some people assume, he is here working his socks off, earning very so, so money and he has to, on a daily basis deal with some right pillocks!!!
He was still way out of line tho!

We were out in Alcudia in May and the Reps then were great which is more than could be said for the coach driver who managed to get lost on the way back to Palma and took us down the side of a water treatment plant (I never realised it was part of the package but hey....!)

Our rep was really nasty, you could see he was tired but he was the same on the return journey. I know the tour operators work the young kids hard but thiers is the first face you see representing thier company and it can put you off from using the reps for the rest of your holiday.

If it was me or my family he said that to I'd have give him a right talking to!
Infact if I'd heard him talking to someone else like that he'd have had a right talking to!
I don't care how stressed or what time he'd have been up since!

Gosh Im just catching up with this one now..........what an awful way to greet someone.........

Id have said

"I dont like your tone, if you cant be civil then you are in the wrong job" (and would have felt like saying something a lot ruder)

cheeky s.d!

We have just come back from nr Alcudia on a First choice holiday too. We went on one of the trips with First Choice to the waterpark. There were 4 adults and 4 children and 1 baby in our group. The First choice rep was not very pleasant on the bus and was very rude to the driver. We were dropped off at the water park, had a fantastic day and then made our way back to the bus at 4.00 pm as instructed. Only the bus was not there !!!!

We waited for ages and finally had to hire two taxis to take us back to our apartments (over 1 hrs drive away). We were furious. When we got back we spoke to the rep at our apartments. When we told him the name of the rep who had left us behind (Rob) he phoned his head office who said "NOT AGAIN" !! Obviously there had been a lot of complaints about this guy (maybe the same one from your bus!!)

Anyway they checked into the matter and the Rep said "he had ticked us of on his list as being on the bus when it left" - how can you miss a big group like ours? They refunded us the money for our taxis.

When we flew back the wife and i got seperate seats on the plane and i was sitting next to the couple who he had upset, they were very young and had just got engaged on this holiday also it was thier first holiday abroad. I felt so sorry for them. We also had a delay at palma and the rep just could not handle any questions from passengers he soon dissapeared and left it to someone else. I didnt get his name but he was young blonde and my wife says possibly called Rob so it could be the same one, he also got a bit ratty with me because we arrived early in the morning and i told him we might not get to the welcome meeting. He replied " so what ive been up all night too "

Hi All

Am not liking what ive read so far about the first choice reps,I have booked my holiday with them and fly out Saturday. Theres always one rep that gives a bad name for all the other reps. Wonder if this was the same rep through out.

Happy holidays

floss

Been with First Choice twice this year (Majorca in April, Kefalonia in May). No problems at all either with transfer rep or resort rep
In fact, I think First Choice offer brilliant value.

Every other rep we came across from First Choice were great.

Just this one who caused problems. He was young and blond Ped so possibly same guy. Can't see him keeping his job much longer if he keeps this up.

In between nodding off on the return transfer he was chatting to another rep about a new girl rep and reading a paper back ( the da vinchi code).
He didnt say much to any of the passengers.

Well First Choice had to refund over £80 to repay our two taxis so they won't be too happy.

take this as first hand experience up until the end of last year.

the level of recruitment and training put into reps is virtually non existent. of say a two week course at leat 10 days of that would be centred on selling and making sales. barely any on customer service. lets put it this way if the rep makes sales targets service targets can be as poor as you like.

now unfortuantely as one of the 'old school' i find this rather disturbing and could write over a hundred pages on the subject from my own 1st hand experiences. what i hated the most was that these people left the rest of us with such a poor image but what worried me most was the general idea that money was better spent recruiting new staff than training and developing current. take that as a good business philosophy if you will?????

now the transfer reps you talk about all work crazy and unsocial hours, it is a regular thing to actuall work non stop for almost 24 hours. however, the reason they act in such manners as you have described is not just down to the workload but the fatc that prior to bein on duty they have spent the best part of the nigh in a club. it is everyday practice to be extremely drunk when doing transfers, drink beyween transfers and use the time on the coach as 'sleep catch up time'

the othet problem is that these people are amazingly under informed of the island, 80% of transfer reps dont even know their own airport procedure let alone yours so when it comes to questions about the island you might as well be in great yarmouth for all they would know.

the basic problem is they are far too young and immature, now this can not be a criticism of them, we were all like that at one point, but surely it is down to the operator to recruit more appropriate staff.