Last Choice Holidays (First Choice)

Member Name: FraserP

Product:	First Choice
Date:	04/04/06 (1092 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: convenient

Disadvantages: ignorant guides, poor communications hopeless customer services

We have not been skiing as a family before, although I have been skiing several times, usually with package operators. Our family is me, my wife and 3 girls aged 16,14 and 8 and they were all looking forward to the trip.

Booking was simple and the brochure seemed to be helpful. The tickets arrived in good time in small neat booklet. The flight out was fine.

However once we reached the airport at Grenoble we found that 95 % of the passengers were on the coach, but we were held up by one family who seemed to want to stop for a meal or something in the airport, and even though it was a small (tiny) airport the staff seemed unable to round them up, so we lost at least half an hour sitting waiting for the last stragglers. The coach then took about 2 hours to get the resort at Alpe d’Huez, which was a little longer than estimated in the brochure despite clear roads and good conditions, which, added to the delay at the airport gave us the unenviable choice of dinner or going to the ski hire shop quickly before they closed for the evening. The latter would have enabled us to get up at a later time in the morning but we would have had to miss our evening meal. So we had the meal and then had to get up very early to be at the hire shop the moment they opened, and then return to the hotel to grab a bite to eat before retracing our steps back to the shop, which was near to slopes. That made us late for our ski lessons.

For some reason that I cannot fully understand the ski pass has to be prepared at the resort once you arrive, so we had to wait around again while this arrived hot off the printer, with errors in our names etc.

The hotel (Pic Blanc) was fine and the skiing was fair to good, bearing in mind the resort had not had snow for 2-3 weeks and so they had to use their snow cannons, which left gaps of ugly brown earth and areas fenced off where the snow was getting thin.

The rep was willing but badly informed; we managed to miss the torch light parade (a weekly event I believe) and a once in a life time 75th anniversary firework display at the resort as he did not know about them, or if he did decided to keep it secret.

We asked for details of the family trips; they offered us a pub crawl, hang gliding, tex-mex meal and a quiz evening. The hotel was half-board with good food, so it was silly to abandon the meal for a slightly different cuisine. The pub crawl and hang gliding were not really “family” events for younger children. So perhaps 1 out of 4 events were of any interest. Not a very good achievement for such a popular and large resort, I think. I have been to smaller villages in Austria with much more imagination- not least moonlight tobogganing.

The trip back was a catalogue of errors; the coach was about 1 ½ hours late to collect us and First Choice did not/ could not tell us when it might arrive (despite several calls to their control centre), so we were left hungry at lunchtime not daring to leave our packed bags to go for a spot of lunch, which with hind sight we could easily and usefully have done had they told us about the likely delay.

The trip to the airport was slow and we later heard that there was a mini coach strike in the morning, although the official line was snow conditions / traffic.

We arrived tired and very hungry at the airport, not having eaten for about 5 hours. I asked the rep if we could have some food on the public side of the airport, where they had several adequate fast food shops with a variety of food. No need, I was told- get through customs etc and there is a duplicate set the other side… so we told the kids to be quiet and wait- we queued for another 45 minutes only to find there was next to nothing on the other side of customs- one small kiosk with vastly over priced sandwiches and not much choice, and 100s of very hungry, delayed passengers.

Another 2 hours in hot, over crowded waiting room with not enough seats and no food, no reps and no news. The flight display boards were so inaccurate / out of date they would have been funny, but the humour was lost on the bewildered crowds waiting for the aircraft.

We board the aircraft 1 1/5 hours overdue and then they keep us on the ground for 45 more minutes, no food or drink on offer.

I knew that we were entitled to some free refreshments once were 2 hours delayed, but they said the rules did not apply to them, so we had to pay for soft drinks etc.

I asked for a report card to fill in but conveniently they said they don’t keep them for short trips (despite announcing that we should ask for them when we boarded).

I think all in all the travel would have been equal in time to a transatlantic flight to Canada, for example, only we would have been fed and given more space and comfort, I feel sure.

Needless to say this was not a cheap holiday; in fact the cost is nearly the same as a trip to Canada, for twice as long!

I have written to First Choice and just had their “customer service” response- we are sorry that you felt that you were given the wrong information was typical- implying that I had misunderstood what they told me. The apologies were hollow and almost template replies.

I accept that they cannot be responsible for the weather or the crowds at the ski lifts or even the temperamental French coach drivers, but if they had well informed staff, and communicated with us by telling us of the delays we could have eaten when we were being held up instead of being treated like cattle heading to market. I can now see why people have been campaigning against exporting live annals to the continent- perhaps First Choice had the contract for the job, and too many died on the way….

Summary: Cattle class travel at champagne prices