I found a very good agent on holiday, really knew her stuff. I mentioned it was a shame I wasn't local and she gave me her card and stated that most of her clients were not local but had come in whilst on holiday, so it is an often done thing.
You lose the ability to stomp into the shop but if you have friends in the area, you can delegate that!

Will definitely use their agent in future but it is sooo much easier using the local shop where you can see what's going on.

I never use a high street Travel Agent and have not done so for years. There are many like me which is why TA in the High Street are struggling.

Sue

I think the down side of not using your local is when things go wrong you have to sort it all out by telephone, and it is nice to be able to go in and sit down face to face with someone.

However for a number of years I used a company called (I think ?) the Travel Company of East Anglia, did everything buy phone and they always got me great deals, no idea if they are still in business.

I then got a computer and swiched to people like Eclipse and Portland and did everything over t'internet myself.

Sorry gone a bit

Hi

Must admit last time we had a problem with Thomson it wasn't Tui who sorted it,we spent ages e-mailing and writing to Thomsons ourselves,eventually settling it because of our friends' agent.Local shop did nothing!!! We have since changed to a different branch,maybe it would have been better to change TO as we've had several problems with them.

I don't know if this is any help but if you do have to change hotels then take a look at the Hotel Don Toni which is very close to the one you booked!
In the Skytours book they have free children upto (and including) age 15!
Now I don't know if they'll let you do AI once there but if you can save £700 using a free child it could well make up the difference of buying your drinks! It'd also be worth reading the reviews to see if you could do AI here!

Thanks for the idea ,Chivas,it was Bahamas our friends particularly liked because it is not very high,he has a big problem with heights.We've told them to pick where we go so will wait to find out,quite exciting,really.Anywhere will be fun as long as we are all together.

Hi All

an update on my earlier post,we received the letter from Thomsons as expected ,stating that due to an error on their booking system we had not been charged for AI,before we booked I printed off website prices,all-inclusive which they matched.The hotel was only offered as AI ,so the price should have been correct.To keep AI we were told we would have to pay another £672.The TA didn't know that my husband had already rung Thomsons and was told we could have a full refund if we were not happy and there had been a note attached to our booking stating this fact.As we really wanted to change to an August booking we decided to take a full refund and have now booked through our friends' agent.The outcome was better than we expected because we have not had to pay any amendment charges,Thanks for all your advice T.

Many thanks for the update, it is appreciated.

luci