Just back from a great 2 week holiday in Lindos. The only complaint was the absolutely useless performance of the Olympic Holidays reps from start to finish of the holiday.

Normally we go away on DIY holidays but this year because it was late in the year before I could get time off work we booked a package with Olympic flying with Monarch. The package industry seems to rate the services of a rep as a major advantage of booking with them, so let's look at the advantages we gained.
Flight out fine and on time. We get on the coach to resort and are told there will be no rep on coach, not a problem the driver knows where he is going. We arrived at Lindos reception where we were dropped with about a dozen other people.

Lindos is a pedestrianised traffic free village. You are taken from Lindos reception on foot to your accommodation by your rep and your baggage is taken there by the baggage men on their little buggies. The only problem was there was no rep there so we spent a nice hour chatting in the boiling sun until our rep finally came strolling up the hill to take us to our accommodation and be reunited with our baggage which had already been taken by the baggage men. When we arrived at our apartment we were unable to go in as it was still being cleaned, because Olympic had allowed the previous occupants for a fee, to keep the room until 6pm despite the fact we were always due to arrive in the village at 5:30pm. We didn't much in the way of an apology for this; maybe this would have been given at the welcome meeting the following for which there were plenty of plugs for. Needless to say we didn't bother to go.

Anyway we managed to avoid the need to see the rep until departure day was looming. Normal procedure is that on the Monday before a Wednesday departure your rep calls around late afternoon early evening to tell you what time your bags after out for pick up and the time your coach leaves. Any way no rep shows up so at 9:30pm we went out. When we got in an the early hours of Tuesday morning there was a note telling us that if we wanted this information we should go the Olympic office on the other side of the village between 10am and 10:30am Tuesday morning. So Tuesday morn off we went to get the times, only no rep in the office. Waited until 10:45 and then back to the apartment to pick up the stuff for the beach, only to find while we and others had been up at the office as requested the rep had been wandering around the village delivering notes with containing the information she had asked us to collect from the office.

Departure day arrived, coached back to the airport. On arrival at the airport we were informed there was a 3.5 hour delay on our flight. So the 360 or so people on our flight queued at the check in desks. For some reason the people sat behind these desks would not check people in. No information was being given by the numerous Olympic reps as to what was happening. A couple of phone home and I found out that the plane that should have taken us home had suffered a lightning strike the day before and had been taken out of service because of damage. Monarch meanwhile had no other spare plane big enough to get everybody on, and could not charter one big enough, so were now trying to arrange 2 planes to make the journey. When I asked our reps about this it was denied and said to be "Chinese whispers". Anyway after about 1.5 hours stood in the queue they began to check us in. When we checked in we found we now had a different flight number then on our tickets. No explanations for any of this came from the reps.

Anyway through to the departure lounge and our flight number is not on any of the screens in the airport. After an hour or so our new number appeared leaving at 10pm instead of 5:30pm (our original departure time) with our original flight leaving an hour after us. About the time we should have been boarding our flight disappeared of the screens again. No announcement, no information and more to the point no plane. Eventually the flight number reappeared, the 2 planes arrived (Chinese whispers) and we departed at 01:15 after almost 12 hours at the airport. When we were onboard the captain confirmed over the PA system what I had found out 9 hours before, he also said that we should all have received a letter stating this at check in. My complaint about this is not the delay, these things happen. It is the wilful withholding of information even to the point of denying what is happening when you get that information from a reliable source. This is what causes anger and resentment amongst the passengers. Basically it seemed to me that as it was the end of the holiday they just wanted us out of their hair. I would be curious to know what the people delayed on the outbound that day were told at Manchester.

Sorry if this is a bit of a rant. I am also aware that this standard is not indicative of reps throughout the industry.