On The Beach, NIGHTMARE !!!!!

I booked and paid for a last minute holiday and flight using my Debit Card as I wanted to avoid the extra % handling costs. My thoughts where that these guys have been around for a while so really, there is no need to cover myself by using a credit card and pay the extra.

For peace of mind, I now wished I had.

I booked and paid for everything on the Friday evening, £746.16. I then received a call at OTB the next morning saying that the Ryan Air flights had gone up and that I would need to stump up another £40. I told her to call back in 30 minutes whilst I did a bit of research into where I stood. As this site shows, this experience with OTB is nothing new. I checked Ryan Air's website and the flights where more expensive that what OTB where charging so my dilemma was either to stamp my feet and cancel or to pay up and have a holiday. In the end I chose to pay the extra £40 made a pack with myself not to use this lot ever again.

The agent called 30 minutes later. I missed her call but she did leave a voicemail and sent me an email with a number to call, the 10 per minute number. I called her back and she answered immediately. I told her I'd pay the extra and thought no more of it. Until I checked my bank account two days later.

OTB had charged me twice for the same holiday, £746.16 and £801.50. I was fuming.

I called them immediately on the number I was given and surprisingly *name removed* wasn't in work that day. I explained what had happened and was passed through to the Admin department. 20 Minutes later, that's £2 in call charges, I eventually got through to another agent who told me that only the accounts department could handle this and the only communication she had with them was via email. I was calm and contained and left the query with her.

As I was due to be flying out 48 hours later, I decided to contact them again the next day to get an update. Again, after another 30 minutes ,£3, I was talking to an agent who said that there was no response from accounts and that he would pursue this as a priority for me.

I also decided to call the hotel I was going to in Spain to see if there was a booking for me and there was. I had 2 rooms booked under my name. They obviously hadn't cancelled one of the bookings and I was worried that I would not get my money back had the room not been cancelled.

I called OTB again, £4 this time, and spoke to an agent,*name removed*. I explained that the money they had was my spends for the holiday and he was sympathetic and agreed to look into it. He said he would ‘walk' over to the accounts department and have it looked into. I emailed him my bank statement showing quite clearly the two payment made to OTB.

Eventually I received a call from OTB saying that a refund had been arranged to the My Bookings section on their website. He was right, it was there. All £746.16, £14.56 short.

In the end OTB have caused me a lot of stress and time. Including calls to their customer care number (care?) the cost of the holiday is roughly £80 more than what I paid for on their website.

I CAN NOT STRESS ENOUGH, DO NOT USE THESE GUYS!!!! Particularly any last minute deal. I DO NOT have any confidence in the fact that I would have received my refund had I tried to chase it down after I returned from my holiday.

There are too many BAD experiences with this company which have been posted and I would hate for someone to go through a repeat of my ‘OTB' experience.

Can you imagine the impact if was double charged on a £3,000 holiday?