I believe that your first contract would be with the Tour Operator. They are responsible for supplying what you (or you agent) booked and what was described in their brochure.

Booking through a travel agent would add a second contract, it being most probably a verbal contract, but a contract nevertheless.

I would seek redress from the Travelagent.

Mark

Your contract in law is with the Travel Agent.

They offer a holiday operated by in effect a company contracted to them.

It may be, as in your case that the sub contractor has not been correctly briefed on what they should be supplying.

As you have said the TO did attempt to try to rectify the problem.

It is not their fault if they cannot do so to your satisfaction. The circumstances may be such that it is impossible for them to do so. Because of the wrong instructions given to them, for example you wanted to stay at hotel A - They may have no vacancies there. If they have not been advised correctly then they could have let the room to someone else and have no others available.

Even if they are at fault your contract is still with the booking agent. Any damages you recover from them they would seek to recover from the TO

fwh

But we gave our requests

Requests can cause problems. Are these a verbal requests to the travel agent, or are they formal requests that are mentioned in the travel company invoice?

If you do not have them acknowledged in the invoice, you could be on a hiding to nothing - sorry.

Peter

I would say Going Places are the ones to rectify any problems you have...I work for a window manufactures and only a couple of weeks ago we had a gentleman phone us about a problems he thought he may have and we couldn't deal with him because we had supplied the Frames to another company who fitted his windows... Even though we will put right and problems that there might be we did not sell this gentleman the product...and need the company to directly contact us on his behalf... I would have thought this was the case in all if not most cases (whatever the product/service/business)

You don't say what your requests were.

For example, if you booked and paid for an Inland View but requested a Sea View and didn't get a Sea View then you have no recourse as a Sea View is an upgrade that you have not paid for. It is just something you get if the hotel is not full and totally at their discretion.

I work in resort for a TO and have had many, many instances of TA's promising/requesting certain views, certain room types and all kind of weird and wonderful things that are sometimes impossible to deliver in resort.

Most TO's have a disclaimer in the back of the brochure stating that special requests are just that and not guaranteed.

If, however it was a specific, bookable product, service, view or whatever and you have been invoiced for it - as Peter says, then you may have some come back against the TO as long as Going Places informed them.

TA's make a big thing of promising you much in the shop or over the phone but in reality, a lot of them have no idea of the reality in resort.

Louise

It's difficult to know one way or the other or to offer you advice without a bit more detail, especially without knowing what it was that was requested/booked. It will depend a lot on whether you actually booked and paid for a specific facility - eg you paid a supplement for a room with a balcony and seaview - or only requested something via the TA and that the TO would try and provide but couldn't guarantee eg a room with easy access for someone with mobility difficulties.

If the former it would be on your invoice and you should get exactly what you paid for and it should have been up to the TO to provide this for you in the resort and offer a suitable alternative and if it wasn't in the end provided then the TA would probably be jointly liable for failing to make sure that it was provided. It always pays to check out the details on your invoice - on a holiday in Tunisia I was offered a free up-grade to sole use of double with a balcony but when I got there the room was lovely but without a balcony. The hotel reception were unco-operative but first thing the next morning the Thomas Cook rep insisted on a change of room because my invoice clearly stated what I was entitled to. I ended up with a lovely double with balcony and seaview as stated on the invoice.

But I often travel with my mother who has some mobility difficulties and we always put in a request for room with easy access to lifts and for our rooms to be nearby etc. I always research the hotel carefully first and ask about steps etc but in the end this is always no more than a request, neither TO nor TA can guarantee this and all they say is that they will forward the request to the hotel. I always follow this up with with direct contact with the hotel, preferably by email and we've never had any problems to date but I wouldn't have any come back with either the TO or TA if the room turned out to be at the farthest end of the corridor because it was only a request and not a guaranteed facility that we had paid for.

SM

Thanks for your help everyone very useful.

Requests can cause problems. Are these a verbal requests to the travel agent, or are they formal requests that are mentioned in the travel company invoice?

I think I caused confusion the way I worded that. There were no special requests with the booking. When I said requsts I meant we walked into the travel agent and said "X amount of us want to go to Ibiza at this time". They offered and subsequently sold the holiday with Thomas Cook.

Basically the way I see it is that the contract was with the travel agent, and they have made a mistake.

When I said requsts I meant we walked into the travel agent and said "X amount of us want to go to Ibiza at this time". They offered and subsequently sold the holiday with Thomas Cook.

Check your confirmation invoice that you received prior to going on your holiday and shortly after booking it.

Do all holidy elements described on the invoice match those of the holiday received? If not then you should take issue with the Tour Operator.

It is important that you check the confirmation invoice when received and if something doesn't match against what is booked that this is raised before you go on holiday.

It is going to be extremely difficult to rectify something after a holiday that could have been rectified before you started it. Similar to you having to give a rep in the resort an opportunity to rectify any problems before you have a valid claim for compensation.

Mark

Check your confirmation invoice that you received prior to going on your holiday and shortly after booking it.

That is just the problem. We never received a confirmation invoice from Thomas Cook. The only documentation we have, and ever saw is from going places. This invoice was produced by Thomas Cook in resort and indeed matches the holiday thye provided. It does not however match the holiday that was sold, and was on the Going Placed paperwork. Had we received it we would have identified the matter and rectified it before leaving the UK.

Going Places received this invoice but didnt pass it on to us. They now maintain that they did post it, but we never received it. in fact there were 2 (being a large group booking) on different dates. Whats the probability of 2 being lost in the post??!!

Thomas Cook say they provided the holiday that was booked with them by Going Places. Going Places say they booked the holiday we requested not the one Thomas Cook provided. that is why its a big mess and that is why we are claiming from Going Places. This invoice matter is one of the main points in our case against them.

Bagand96, I know you said that the problem was related to the room allocation but I think that we're all still a bit in the dark here and can only offer the most general advice until you provide more information. Can you explain a bit more about exactly what the problem was? Did you not get the sort of rooms you wanted? Where the facilities in the rooms not as you paid for? Was the hotel of a lower standard than you thought you'd contracted for? All you've told us so far is that you didn't get what you thought you'd paid for but haven't given us any idea of what you think you paid for and what you actually got.

On the basis of what you say here ie that you walked into Going Places and asked for holiday in Ibiza for X amount of people, then unless you ended up somewhere other than Ibiza and/or there weren't enough beds for your party, then it sounds as if you did get what you asked for until you can provide us all with information to the contrary. To extend your analogy re other retailers, if I walk into a shop and say I want a washing machine without stipulating exactly what I'm looking for in a washing machine and they sell me one, as long as it washes my clothes I've no come back if it doesn't have eg as fast a spin speed as I would have liked and the clothes come out damper than I would have liked. If it washes the clothes clean then it's fit for purpose as a washing machine even if it's not fit for my purpose - it's not the machine which is faulty, it's my fault for not stipulating exactly what sort of machine I wanted. So tell us what your holiday spec was and in what ways going places failed to deliver it and then we might be able to give you more specific advice in return.

SM