It's also pretty stressful though, and agh, sometimes you want to pull your hair out!!

The best DIY holidays are to be had by booking beautiful self-catering accommodation, rather than just staying in hotels. This way you can be sure of exactly wht you're getting and exactly where the property is located.

One more tip given the current climate.
If possible, pay for flights accommodation etc using your credit card ! There may well be some extra fees to pay by using a credit card but it does offer you some protection should things go pear shaped.

Remember when booking DIY you may not have the protection of that when booking with a travel agent.

Cheers
Carefuul Rog

Some useful information for those booking accommodation DIY HERE

luci

whoops done it backwards.
Accom booked. waiting for the flights to be released for sale.

when you see a website that looks like it has bargains, stop! Ignore the prices, look for the address. Until you know who you are dealing with the prices don't matter. See if we already have a section on them, either under Complaints, DIY, Travel Agents or Flight Only.

see who the site is registered to using something like

http://www.easywhois.com/index.php
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp

that isn't foolproof, sometimes addresses are withheld and sometimes they use agents in a different place (that can work against honest companies).

Any decent company will have a Contact Us or About Us link. And any decent company will show the address and phone number. If you were expecting a UK company it should be a UK address and hopefully a proper UK dialling code (although a lot will use 0800 or 0871). If the address is in London SW14 post a query asking for help (it's a long story!). Otherwise use Royal Mail's http://www2.royalmail.com/postcode-finder click address finder and just put the postcode in. With any luck your company should show up which at least means they are known to Royal Mail. You may find they know several other companies at the same address, sometimes that's not a problem because it will be a big shared building but if it's only two rooms over a chippy it's not good news! You can also try searching for the phone number in Google to see if it's linked to anything else. And if you now how, look for the building in Google Streetview and see what it says on the door. It is possible for mail and phone numbers to be diverted overseas so knowing what goes on in the building is important.

If it's supposed to be foreign and comes back with the sort of thing you'd expect then it's a start. You can do Google searches on phone numbers and long postcodes to see if they are known. Stretview also works for some other countries.

If it was supposed to be a Turkish site and gives a Turkish address that's a start (not a guarantee) but if it was supposed to be an international booking agent and has a Turkish connection be very, very, wary - we've found several fakes!

If you can't find an address anywhere be very wary. If it's a flashy site that looks like a solid business but displays no proper contact details post a query with it's name and see what we can dig up. There are only two reasons why a company will design a flashy website and not show contact details, either they are a bunch of amateurs or they are up to no good!