replying to rachie b
i must be lucky as i have always got my first choice when booking online. when they first started doing the online booking not sure how many years ago? 3 i think that was when i only put in 1 choice and 1 date and got the holiday also did it later that first year with the next lot of sun hols did not book one last year so i assume thats when you had to put in 3 choices.

i must be lucky as i have always got my first choice when booking online. when they first started doing the online booking not sure how many years ago? 3 i think that was when i only put in 1 choice and 1 date and got the holiday also did it later that first year with the next lot of sun hols did not book one last year so i assume thats when you had to put in 3 choices

it would be so much easier only having to input 1 and then having a yes or no answer to that, before moving on to another choice!

hmmm.... trying to remember when we started booking online ,think was 2007

i didnt think i would get first choice of both date and park,as we are going to france in a half term !

but have gotten first choice of both in summer hols in UK, last yr!

not too bothered,we love the site and its actually a better one than the one i wanted,but not as close to DLRP

where have you booked for ?

i have booked for parkdean crantock beach in newquay for the bank holiday weekend in may. its my daughters 14th birthday. i booked this site as we are taking our dog with us and its a pet friendly site but will have to pay as much for the dog as if we had an extra person!

The only problem with booking on line is that there are quite a few holiday places that are really good but not on internet booking so if i am not bothered which date i want i send my priority booking form in and wait to see what i get.

happy hols can't wait hope the rain stays away

they were all bookable online this time round though ?

even the european ones

when i was booking my hol on line there were 3 i was interested in that were not listed and when you go onto the web site of the ones not listed you have to ring up to book or do it by post they are small sites compared to haven ect.
i didn't count how many hol places were on line but it did look to me like there were not that many for each area compared to what was in my brochure.

does anyone know why I can't book online, have tried 20 times to book a Sun holiday for my brother-in-law who has the priority booking number and form, and 8 code words, and every time I input the information it goes back to the first page.

Thanks for any help

this was happening to some others on a different forum

have you tried clearing cookies? trying on a different PC ?

xx

Hi
We've been using the Sun £9.50 Holidays offer since it began and we have had priority booking for at least 3 years. We have always been successful booking the park we wanted as priority customers. The parks booklet for 2009 said priority customers could book on the 12th January online.My hubby spent all morning trying all the big Haven parks around Wales,North West and North East for the second week of the Easter Holidays. Not one of the parks are available, the only ones on offer are the small parks with no amenities. We have always managed to get a popular park so what has happened this year?.Is it the big parks know they will get customers who can no longer afford holidays abroad and who will be prepared to pay full price?
Has anyone else experienced this? I have written to customer services at the Sun but received the usual reply ' not all parks are available on certain dates'.
Smells very fishy indeed!

the site actually opened on the sat evening ( 10th) was supposed to be sunday 11th ( they changed the date) but it always opens earlier than advertised

so maybe the dates and parks you wanted had already gone ah yes you wanted school holidays,which explains it !

they only allocate a certain number of accom on a certain site,for SUN holidays

so once they are gone they are gone!

better luck next time

xx

Hi All,
My Wife and I have dedicated some time to exploring more of the UK in the first half of 2009 (USA in August hopefully) and managed to get one of the Sun Holidays booked for £38 (just the two of us) purely as a base to seeing some of the surrounding areas.

Anyway, we got Summer Lodge just outside Newquay over Easter which is fine. When I got the invoice I was expecting to see the entertainment passes charge, but I was surprised to see a linen charge added of £25 for our 3 nights . Now, I was under the impression that you could take your own linen and avoid this charge, however the Sun have not been able to help and the Holiday Park has ignored emails and letters. There is a lot of talk on other forums about the Holiday Parks trying to recoup costs by adding items onto a Sun Holiday, making it not quite the bargain that it seems.

Has anybody got experience of this? Obviously, £25 isn't a great deal of money but when you've paid just £38 for the whole holiday comparatively it seems excessive, and something I want to avoid. In emails and letters to the Holiday Park I have requested a revised invoice but this has fallen on deaf ears. Would it be acceptable to send a cheque for the entertainment passes only and mention that we will bringing our own linen when paying? I really don't want to void the holiday by not paying in full.

Any thoughts?

Thanks
Ju

Try phoning them & explain the situation & ask for a new invoice.

i always pay the balance over the phone, and tell them i will not be requiring linen hire

and they take the cost off
x

I always ring as well and take the linen charge off and the entertainment cost as well when only two of us going as we don't use it. The only other charge we have to pay is the service charge, always do this on all sites we have visited with no problems. Ring the number they give you to pay the balance on not the site.

To jwhiting Get used to that kind of treatment from Summer Lodge. They are rude, discourteous and have no idea when it comes to customer service. ( just look online for reviews). Summer Lodge was where we were going to be staying this year, as i seemed to remember it was a reasonable base for exploring Cornwall and had some nice caravans to upgrade to. I spent a lot of time making sure that we got this place when we booked for 2 families online. I wish I never bothered. I was in contact with them from the day I booked my holiday as I wanted to upgrade ( take it from me, the basic Sun Holiday accomodation is absolutely disgusting, I know as I have been here twice before with the Sun). I was asked to wait, then wait a bit longer. When they finally decided I could upgrade, guess what? Only one 2 bed top of the range caravan left, even though I was assured by them that there were plenty of upgrades available. That fact I wanted a better than basic 3 bed seems to have passed them by.
As for linen charges, they will take them off if you take your own. But herein lies the con. If you book direct and not through the Sun, linen is included as are passes and anything else that suddenly becomes an extra through the Sun.
I am now fighting a wearying battle with the Sun over refunds. They seem to be in no rush to deal with it, yet I am £90 out of pocket.
All in all, I am now giving these type of bargain holidays a miss. Really, just look at the deals to be had by going direct. It is often cheaper if you are a family of 5. We are now booked at another site nearby , top notch caravan, all passes and linen included and it cost £25 more than a Summer Lodge cess pit. You get a choice of accomodation, linen and all the stuff you would expect. Can't wait for this credit crunch to improve, then I can afford to go abroad!

If the truth be known "Sun holidays" are not the cheap holidays they make out.
Once everything is added & you then find you are staying in a very basic van, its far better to find a privately owned van & book direct.
You get a better class van with plenty of extras that are taken for granted ie heating!!
Very few fleet vans are anything more than basic, you may be very lucky & be put into a private van thats on long term let to the site.
Why take the risk, book with what you know & see the van you are going to stay in & know its location onsite.

haha you would say that ..... you have a static caravan !
Of course its not 9.50 per person once you add the extras ( although you can get sites with FREE passes and no service charges etc on certain dates .....)

BUT still a very good deal if you wish to go in school holidays ,compared to booking direct ( even with passes etc on top) especially the likes of Butlins etc

if you wish to go during term time, then indeed it may be cheaper to book direct

ALWAYS compare what it will cost with the sun, and what it would cost by booking direct

maybe we have just been lucky?! in the sites we have chosen
as even the basic accom has been perfectly clean, and fine as a base for 3/4 nights

the french sites in particular are fab ! and make great savings by booking with the sun

x

To everybody who has responsed to my linen charge query thank you very much.

Sunshine01, many many thanks for your very informative post about Summer Lodge in particular. This will be our first time using the Sun Holidays and all we really wanted was a base for a short 3 or 4 night break to see an area of the UK we haven't visited before. We were actually very disappointed to get Easter Holidays weekend as our dates because my Wife has 5 days of holiday carried over from 2008 that has to be used by end of March and we really wanted to get those dates. I appreciate the weather isn't going to be upto much in March, but as I said, we were only using the caravan park as a base and not even a Travelodge can beat those prices.
To counter this we booked a Parkdean Holiday in Dorset for the March dates, which we are looking forward to, with a De Vere Venue hotel tagged onto the beginning and end for just £10 per night. The Parkdean Holiday is £90 for 4 nights, so 6 nights accommodation for a total of £110 isn't that bad in my opinion. Anyway I have gone

I have emailed Summer Lodge twice and written to them with no reply which has left me unimpressed. I will phone them when it comes to paying off the balance owed (just £10.50 for service charge if linen charge is excluded) but I don't need to do that just yet. Our Sun Holiday will therefore be £48.50 total for 3 nights made up of the £38 for the two of us and £10.50 service charge. I was hoping that the budget accommodation wasn't going to be "disgusting" to be honest. We have had recent experiences of staying in hostels during a round the world trip a few years back so appreciate that places can be a bit grim, but I was hoping for basic but clean. I guess it's a wait and see until we get there.

I must admit that I am quite excited by the prospect of seeing Dorset and Cornwall in the next few months and hope that our first ever experiences of Holiday Parks as a couple are acceptable. They will be just a base as I have mentioned, so fingers crossed.

Many thanks again.

To jwhiting This is the email address I used to get hold of Summer Lodge 'info@summerlodge.co.uk' as I too had problems when trying to telephone them. Often it would go to a mobile number answer message. Apparently they were having 'problems'. Hmm, you can say that again!

The Kommandant, sorry, Park Manageress is Pauline Turnbull so if you address it for her attention it might get through? The other lady there is Sue, she usually answers the phone if anyone actually does.

Things may have improved since my last stay at Summer Lodge, if you do end up with a low grade caravan just complain before you even unpack and demand to see an alternative. Even a similar specification unit might be better.

I must say that your Dorset trip seems good and to be honest, the Parkdean sites seem Ok on the whole.

Cornwall is nice, especially if you have never been before, I am sure you will want to visit again. For me it is a 2 hour journey, so I have seen it a lot and still look forward to going there. St Micheals Mount is worth a look, Lands End of course ( bit commercial now though) and scores of beaches to visit. Best pasties are in Padstow.

Thanks Sunshine. I will keep trying to get in touch but I have a month or so before the final payment needs to be done so will try again nearer the time.

We are going to try the standard budget accommodation and see what it is like. It's a long drive for us (6hrs) although we will split that up with an overnight on the way (another De Vere £10 deal) so it won't be so bad. I was really hoping for a 4 night break to Cornwall because of the journey time but 3 it is and although I have heard less than great things about Summer Lodge, we are both looking forward to exploring the area.

Thanks for the tips on what to see and do. It really is all new to us, the closest I've been is Plymouth for football and we just left straight after the game (madness I know!!!). Apart from a trip to Taunton with a friend, that's all I've got to show for that area and I've travelled around the world. The UK really is ripe for exploration during this credit crunch so I hope we have made the right decision and that Summer Lodge make us welcome. I will keep you posted and let you know how everything goes in April.