Dear Ros

I haven't even gone on holiday and am having trouble - have already put this on the forum if you need a more detailed account.

Basically my husband and I booked to go to Kolymbia in Rhodes for our AI holiday this year and following reading a review on Holiday Truths we found out that the hotel we were booked into was predominantly German to the extent that all entertainment and announcements were going to be in German.

The Entertainment is paramount to us as we have two children so we went to see our travel agent who was really good.

Our problem is that we have now been forced to go the Benidorm in what we consider to be a substandard hotel in a resort that my husband and I have no passion in visiting.

Thomson have been totally unco-operative and then had the cheek to charge us £120 to change the holiday and to add insult to injury we have ended up travelling from Stanstead Airport (we live in Manchester) so that when our late room check out expires we don't have to sit around a hotel reception area with two kids and all of the luggage etc for up to 8 hours which would have been the case had we taken the flights from Manchester.

This has caused my family and I so much stress over the last few days and myself just not really wanting to go on holiday at all.

Out of £3000 pounds that the original holiday cost we were refunded £60 after all of the additional charges - and this will probably end up being our petrol money for the 4 hour journey to catch the plane.

Any advice

Gay gay,

Ros may be contacted directly during office hours on 01922 621114 for free impartial holiday advice.

Thank you I will certainly ring her as I feel very let down regarding this matter

Gay Gay

I booked a holiday on TravelSelect.com from Dublin to Alicante via Manchester. This was on the 12/08/03. We were told we had to pay E45 for DHL delivery of the tickets to my home.
The day before we were to fly out, we still had no tickets. They emailed me and stated the tickets will be in Dublin. We left that night @3am and we went into departures @7.30am.
NO TICKETS"¦
We were three hours running around from desk to desk and made 3 phonecalls to the TravelSelect helpline (Costing E30) on payphone. I talked to 3 different representitives who said they'd ring me back with details, they never did.
It was 10.30, our flight was 11.00 and we were going back home again. My girlfriend was very,very upset and exhausted. I told her to plead one more time to the Aerlingus staff (preferably a man, because he might be softer on an upset girl) and he finally agreed to print our tickets.
At this stage we thought this was half the nightmare, as we though we'd have the same problem in Manchester, but they (MonarchAir) had our tickets for that part of the journey..

Now I have emailed TravelSelect on their complaints contacts and they have completely ignored me. Ye have no idea what a mental nightmare this was, and I justed wanted to know what are my rights here? Surely I'm entitled to the delivery charge as I didn't get the tickets? Finally they did respond to me and took my credit card details. They said they would reinburse me £150 in Nov '03. They didn't. They told me again that it would take 18 weeks again to sort it out. It's September 2004 now and now they are ignoring me. Am I flogging a dead horse here, or shouldn't I let them get away with this ??

Badstarthol give Ros Fernihough a call on Monday on 019222 621114 as I'm sure she'll be able to assist you. Ros features quite a lot on radio in Ireland.

Hi,

I am currently in dispute with Thomas Cook over misrepresentation of a holiday they sold to us in Dominican Republic. I have many complaints, food, entertainment, standard of accommodation etc......
It was not the 4* they said! It was barely 3*

Then came the hurricane which we were not warned about by the agent and alot of other things were different to what the agent said.

I have written a long letter and had a long reply as we left our holiday a week early it was so bad to go to Miami.
The letter basically says that because we did not complain at the time they wont do anything but general feedback is that the hotel is good, they have no record of us checking out early, etc.... They basically say we are liars and wont give any compensation because of the hurricane, but this was not my only complaint! I have copies of the letter of complaint I sent them and the reply and would be interested to see if the reponse is correct and accurate as we are now 1500 pounds lighter for the holiday and extra we paid to have our week elsewhere as it was so bad!

Christian

Why not give Ros Fernihough, Solicitor a call tomorrow, to see what advice she can offer - 019222 621114.

Kath HT Admin

went on a 4 day sightseeing hol to new york. arrived to find no accommadation was booked by travel company, spent time searcing for hotel to stay. had to pay for hotel accommadation ourselves. Did not do any sightseeing, never unpacked suit cases, holiday company will refund cost of accomadation only, not the flight. We did not have a holiday so I think I should be intitled to a full refund.

Is this fair.

how do you arrive at a cost of loss of enjoyment?

thanks

pete

Hi Ros
I do hope that you will be able to help. I have booked a holdiay to Cuba through a specialist travel agent. We live in Sheffield but decided to travel to Heathrow as we could get direct flights with Air jamaica. Now AJ have cancelled flights and travel company have offered us alternative flights from Heathrow with Iberia, changing planes in Madrid. This puts an extra 3 hours on the journey and defeats our objective of minimising the travel time as we have 2 children under 4. The return flight lands at 5.15pm and this will be dire in returning home on M25 and M1. I have asked that we fly from Birmingham with Iberia as this does make it seem bearable, but it seems there may be a cost implication of several hundreds of pounds. I have also asked for my deposit back which they will not give as they say they havent changed the airport. Where do I stand? Thanks Kaz

Contact details for Ros Fernihough can be found above.

David

I had to contact Ros about a holiday that Airtours cancelled two days before I was due to go. They had offered me £80 in vouchers as compensation and I thought that this was unacceptable. Ros and her team were absolutely brilliant. She got me £300 cash as compensation, I cannot thank her enough. Once again Thanks.

Could you please give me some advice as to what is needed to be done first in case of [say a accident] while on holiday.
What do i do first,what do i need to carry with me [papers]
Who would i need to phone.
Any info would be greatly appreciated..

Hi sleep_r_us .... as this is the Holiday Complaints forum, it perhaps may not be the best place for answers to this type of enquiry.

Who you would contact would very much depend on the nature and extent of the incident - it may be your holiday rep, local emergency service, travel insurer, overseas consulate or the Foreign Office.

If you use the link at the top of all pages to access the Safe & Sound booklet, you may find some useful information there about what to do in an emergency situation.

David

Sorry new to this

Hi
Hopefully someone maybe able to help me...but I think I found you guys to late
I've just found on one of the boards an extract of Safe and Sound booklet relating to Regulation 15 of the Package Tour and Travel Regulations. Relating to the tour operators obligations and responsiability for their guests.
Short version: when we arrived in Hygarda, we were met by our travel rep from the company that we booked with. We were advised not to book excursions with the locals or with the private companies at the hotels as we would have no insurance. It would cost us 5/10€ more but we would be insured! I booked through our travel comp-Rep(that we were travelling with)
I booked a boat excusion with them, with the understanding that my family and I would be safe and insured. (thats what our Rep said)
Not the case. As I stepped on the boat the cabin boy opened up the hatch as I walked passed, I fell in the hole which resulted in mutiple injuries. nothing broken thank heavens. But i still am having back and rip problems some 9 months later.I have being having treatment since my arrival home. We have followed all the lines on contacting the travel comp rep. tel. phoning the main office to. ect. They say the whole thing is my doing. Today I have my first appoinment with the lawyers...

My questions is: what is the defination of pre-booked excursions? does that mean booking that the time of package holiday or does that mean any time booking with the company?
I would really appreciate some help. Thanks so much

To all who run this website and Ros and the legal team:
Thank you for making the safe and sound booklet available and it makes sense!! Not written in the usual legal speak. Have already printed a copy, read through most of it and packed it in my suitcase. Even though i've already had cause for complaint with my tour operator and we haven't even gone on holiday yet, knowing that there is help out there makes me feel loads better. Anyone else reading this who's been let down recently by a tour operator, please read the booklet. Its very helpful. Thanks again.

Could someone please confirm Ros' phone number, as I passed it onto my parents in law and they have been unable to get through. The number I gave them was 019222 621114 - although I've also seen it on this board as 01922621114 - neither seem to work.

Thanks

Gill

I believe Ros's number is 01922 621114.

luci

Cheers Luci - will get them to try again.

Gill

Hi
On 6th July we booked a hotel and flight with a well known on-line/telephone travel agent.We booked flights Scy6621 Manchester -ChaniaDeparting 08.0023Aug2005 returning to Manchester on flight SCY6622 on30Aug 2005 at17.30.We received confirmation of these flights
3 days later.Then on 27th July we recieved a letter saying that we were now flying XLA2196 on23 Aug departing at 16.15 and returning on flight XLA2197 arriving at Manchester 02.00 on the 31st August.We rang to try and rearrange this but we were refused despite us offering to travel to a different location or travel from East Midlands. We then asked if we could cancel but were told we would loose all of our flight cost and most of our hotel money.It now appears that the flight we were originally due to fly on was probably never scheduled to fly from Manchester(I spoke to handling at Manchester and they can't recall a flight schedule for this flight).Are travel agents allowed to sell seats that don't really exist and then re-allocate you seats on night flights?There were plenty of other flights that they could have put us on according to their own web-site.
Thanks for your help.