Issue with online travel agent taking longer than stated to rectify.

insafehands

I agree not to act on any advice given in reply to this thread and understand that the opinion given is just that etc.

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Hi,

I booked tickets for four people to go to Ayia Napa for our Leaving Cert holiday a couple of months ago. The dates are the 16th - 26th of August.

The confirmation email was received on the 13th April and I got the tickets about 10 days later.

This agent, let's call them flexmedia.com, only have a UK site so the tickets had to be delivered to the UK; and they were, to someone in the North.

Anyway, that aside, it was about 2 weeks later that a friend realised that his name was wrong on his ticket.

Instead of, let's say Smith/John, it read Smith/ST.

I emailed them the same day and it was stated on their site they'd get back to me within 24 hours.

They didn't, and it was approximately 4 days later that I got a call from one of their representatives to talk about the problem. They acknowledged it was a mistake on their behalf and that I had put the name in right (the confirmation email I got had the right name, too).

He apologised for the problem and said that in this particular case he'd try/expect to get back to me within one week, but at worst it would be (the standard, I believe he said), 28 days.

It was approximately 10 days later that I emailed them to ask about the problem. Again, I didn't get the stated response within 24 hours, but an email a few days later, dated May 21st.

The email read:

Dear Mr *******,

Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding complaint reference ******.

This issue is currently with our Customer Relations department and I have passed this chaser to them.

We have checked the details of your case and can confirm that it is currently being being investigated.

The agent handling your case will be in touch in due course with a conclusion to the issue raised.

We are sorry for any inconvenience and appreciate your ongoing patience in this matter.

Yours sincerely

Anyway, I heard nothing for more than 2 weeks and so I called them. They said it hadn't been 28 days yet (using the 21st May date) and that they would get back to me by the end of the week. Bear in mind that they said the problem was with their customer relations department in the email, not that they will pass it on now, which to me suggested it had already been 28 days and they were making excuses.

Again, they didn't get back to me "by the end of the week" and so I called them again. This time, I was told a second time (not sure I mentioned the first), that they would pass this on as "urgent". I asked was there anything she could do and she said no. Also, as it was more than 28 days would I get any compensation or would I just have to wait, she said I'd have to wait. Towards the end I asked could she not go to the department herself and ask them to hurry up and she said no, they don't work weekends, which was fine.

I asked if she could call me back on Monday (today) and she said the call-centre only did incoming calls and that wasn't possible. So I said I'd call them back today but I didn't as I've been sick and am in bed at the moment.

Anyway, I've been speaking to someone else with a bit of experience dealing with these matters and he said I should look for legal advice or just threaten them with it.

Although it's over 6 weeks until we go away I've got other things I'll be doing, and other places I'll be, so I won't be able to pursue this as much as I have had to do.

They've consistently broken their promises about getting back to me within 24 hours and 28 days and I've wasted money calling them and getting nowhere. Is there anything I can do, or do I have to do as I was told and just wait?

This is a company with a market cap of nearly $9bn dollars so I find it really amazing that they can have such terrible customer service; they haven't once contacted me to keep me updated; I've had to do all the chasing...

Cheers,
ish.

Patrickof

Hmm, we had a bad experience with a UK travel company two years ago, they cancelled a holiday within weeks (this coming right into peak season, we had booked many months in advance to take advantage of early booking offers) and gave us absolutely no assistance.

Anyway, we were getting no where with emails / phone calls to them so I sent them an email with the phrase "WITHOUT PREJUDICE" in the subject field and voila, they responded promptly. I guess they thought we'd taken legal advice!

insafehands

Cheers mate.

Anyone else have any ideas? There phone number (which I had to Google for) is engaged at the moment...