I recently booked a holiday for my friends with OTB recently(yes I did advise them not to use them) and they arrived at Benidorm yesterday and thankfully all was well.

The paperwork for their terms and conditions clearly states rightly or wrongly that they are an agent and will accept no responsibility whatsoever, flight problems must be directed to the airline and accomodation to low cost beds.

I personally think that the paperwork content was very misleading regarding tickets etc ie the paperwork states you get them when I knew that with a low cost carrier you don't. I queried this and it took them 47.5 hours of the maximum 48 hours to reply.

I was fortunate that I do know the ins and outs of booking but if it had been left to my non travelling friends it would have been a nightmare for them, I personally would never recommend OTB and it appears that you just have to cross your fingers and hope for the best when booking with them.

This is what I would have understood because it is a No Frills airline. There has been a lot of publicity from Ryanair last week regarding their flights booked by other agencies. They said that they would not honour these flights but from what I have read to date I don't know of anyone who has been refused boarding.
Yes you will have been charged a fee for them booking the flight for you. They may not have spelled this out to you but it would be somewhere on their booking form.
You in the end would have been better booking the flights yourself but the baggage would still have to be paid for. This comes up once you have almost completed the booking.
I recently found myself having to book another flight after missing my morning flight. It looked like I would pay £69.50 but once the booking was processed it ended up being £104 35/
Baggage card charges tax etc etc.
I found it misleading but it was there once I started making the booking. Sad but true. Feel that there is little you achieve here other than to know for the future. I doubt that this company will change their policy and often when you are speaking to someone it is a young agent with little experience.

Sue

The paperwork for their terms and conditions clearly states rightly or wrongly that they are an agent and will accept no responsibility whatsoever, flight problems must be directed to the airline and accomodation to low cost beds.

As with many things companies may apply conditions. The problem for them is what a court would consider as reasonable. In my opinion a court would take a dim view of these T&Cs. Companies cannot hide behind their T&Cs. They do have a duty of care and when they accept your booking they enter into a contract that is enforceable from both sides.

The above may be obvious to many but OTB, like others, rely on people not being aware of what is the law and so accepting their word.

fwh

OK....I'm starting to get a little worried now. I booked with OTB to fly with Thomas Cook (Monarch) to Dalaman in October. I received a confirmation email and ATOL receipt, but on checking the email again, I see it says it is a provisional booking. I've contacted them to get them to confirm it, but should I be worried?

Do you have your holiday booking reference number for the flights? Have you paid in full?

With my friends I booked it and then lo and behold they rang me the next morning to say the flights were not available so were changed and this was both carrier and departure airport! I then received a couple of confirmation emails with information to print out and no-where on them did it say that it was only a provisional booking. My gripe was it clearly indicated that tickets would be issued when infact this was not the case and the staff seem unable to answer a telephone!

As far as agents are concerned I should have got their cut as I actually ended up doing their work for them!

Another thing if you have the confirmation number have you checked the airlines website to ensure that the booking has been processed and confirmed?

I have a holiday booking reference number and ATOL receipt, but the email makes it clear this is NOT a confirmed booking, and I haven't received anything else. Got my credit card statement today and no money has been taken as yet. I'm going to phone OTB tomorrow and find out what is going on.

Very strange indeed that they have not taken your money, it does not sound like you actually have anything booked yet(sorry).

Don't hold your breath waiting for them to answer the phone because in my experience..they don't!

I know...I'm starting to fear the worst now.

Well, after hanging on the phone for what seemed like forever, I finally got through to OTB (thank god for the 0800 number!) and they have confirmed my booking. No explanation as to why I didn't receive the confirmation email though - they certainly don't seem like the most professional of companies.

dont mean to scare you but didnt you say earlier that they had not taken any money as yet

if not then i think i am right in saying nothing has been confirmed until themoney comes out of your account

So even if they have sent me an email today stating that my booking has been confirmed, that still doesn't mean anything?

OK...just checked my bank account online and the money has now been taken out. With that, and the confirmation email, I'm now beginning to relax (a little......won't relax completely until I'm on the beach in Icmeler sipping an ice-cold Efes, or maybe I'll be adventurous this time and try a vodka and cherry juice!)

It appears they simply did not bother processing your booking in the first place then so just aswell you rang them.

Glad that you are sorted

just herd from my freinds on the beach emaild them today to say they were going to refund them £1600 for accom that they did not want 2 weeks ago they had to take the flights and found another hotel themselfs onb said money would be in there account by the end of the week will let you know when it is

thanks the fatboy

I joined Holiday-Truth today and have been reading about OTB, now beginning to panic.
Booked return flights to Lanzarote, paid £200 deposit for an invoice totalling £625 (including £15.25 credit card charge)
Both flights were with BMI Baby
No problem so far.
5 weeks ago received a letter from a company called Teleticket stating that my outward flight had been changed to Thomas Cook, still no problem other than Thomas Cooks baggage allowance is only 15kgs, BMI being 20kgs.
But more interestingly I also received a copy of the Invoice sent by Teleticket showing the price to be paid and that the deposit paid by OTB was £50 less than I sent.
Anyway I paid the outstanding balance for the flights, received an additional card charge when paying online, so that I have now been charged for the original total £610 (remember the credit card charge was added to the invoice) plus another £11.25 for the £400 I just paid.
I also just received notification from OTB of a change to my flights showing the information I was sent by teletickets.
I now await further charges and changes.

I wrote to OTB with my second letter over a month ago now and have still not heard anything back from them - again top marks for customer service!
I know what you mean about the charges too. They charged me more for the flights than if I had booked directly.

we booked a holiday to egypt with on the beach ,two parties booked the same time but different accounts. we payed our deposit by debit card but asked them not to retain our details as we would pay the balance by credit card as that would give extra insurance.
yesterday i discovered they had not only taken the balance of my holiday from my debit card but also the other partys balance leaving me overdrawn. trying to get hold of them by phone is a circus they have a very expensive o8 number and by some strange coincidence you are always 9th in the line to be answered, just as your turn comes up the message" the other party has cleared " is announced and you have to go through the whole procedure again.
having read through the other posts in this forum I m in dread of what is yet to come

I may be wrong here but just going off a holiday I have recently booked with Thomas Cook and the balance is set on the system to automatically come off the same card that I paid the low deposit with.

Could this be a new thing to ensure that agents get their payments as per contract?