Great holiday, zero value add from First Choice (First Choice)

Member Name: k4ssie

Product:	First Choice
Date:	07/06/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Can prebook extra leg room seats

Disadvantages: Not much in the way of customer service

My partner and I booked through First Choice for a holiday to Mexico earlier this year. I chose them purely because they were one of the few package agents to offer the particular resort we already knew we wanted, and also because it's possible to book extra leg room seats on the flight. I'm used to booking all my travel independently over the web, so wasn't expecting much from First Choice in terms of value add.

Despite that, they still managed to disappoint. Having booked the holiday over their web site (which is pretty slick, apart from the length of time it took to find dates where extra leg room seats were available - we'd have gone any dates provided we could get leg room, but there was no option to just find flights where they weren't already booked up, instead i had to try a hundred different combinations until i chanced on some where extra leg room came up as an option), the first sign of trouble came when i needed to actually speak with someone. On of the things "included" in my booking was "pre booked seats" so i called up to find out how i actually went about confirming the seat numbers. I had to try four or five times before i got through to a person, each time spending five to ten minutes in a call queue before giving up. Then, the person i spoke to cheerily told me that I had to call the airline (the first choice airline this is, not another company!) to do that, which meant a different number. Which was only answered 9-5 monday to friday, so as it was sunday i gave up for another day. So far, so unimpressive.
When i did get through to the flight people, apparently i couldn't actually pre book specific seats - that term on my web booking just meant that i would get a seat, apparently. OK, score one to brochure gibberish.

~ the flight~
Fast forward to leaving day, and i'll skip over the 40 minutes spent *outside* Gatwick airport in minus five degrees, because saturday mornings are so oversubscribed that the queues go right round the terminal. Not entirely FC's fault, although maybe they could've had more than two desks open, or even warned us about the queues because all the airport staff said it was like that every week in winter because of the ski flights. At the desk, i learn that we've been allocated the seats by the exit doors - this is what i wanted to avoid, because i feel the cold very badly and knew i'd be freezing after a few hours. No chance of swapping to the seats at the front of the plane, apparently, and they couldn't say what seats we'd get on the return leg even though they'd already have been allocated somewhere deep in "the system". Oh well. No suprise that we got the same darn seats on the way home too, and i spent the overnight shivering under a pile of blankets.

~the flight~
Seats - uncomfortable, on a par with budget airlines except for the extra leg room;
Staff - pleasant, no complaints here. Brought me lots of blankets when i was freezing, too, so the cabin crew were a point in FC's favour.
Catering - truly horrible. When we fly Ryanair, we usually go to Pret at the airport and stock up before we leave. Next time i'd do that for FC too, the food was dry and tasteless and not enough to get me through 12 hours. Even worse, in these days of DVT warnings, the only free liquid provided was two tiny thimblefuls of tea or coffee, the whole flight. Luckily i'd brought my own 2 litres otherwise i'd have been gasping by the time we got there.
Entertainment - not too bad, even if you didn't choose to fork out the extra fiver for the upgrade - this allows you to see some films which were released in the last decade / not "straight to video" and other content.

~ transfers ~
So, we did get in on time, let's be grateful for the basics! Tedious bureacracy done with (much better organised than in the UK, both inbound and outbound) we headed off to our coach for transfer. Pretty tired and hungry, and looking forward to getting to the resort. And we waited. And waited. For about 40 minutes. Eventually it turned out that one group had arranged private transfers, but as FC don't ask if you have, nobody knew - and who knows, that family might have spent a few hours trying to get through to the call centre to tell someone and given up, who knows. By the time we finally left the airport, we really were all starting to lose the will to live! The rep on the bus wasn't too great either, a fair amount of semi-incomprehensible commentary but nothing very useful, and he kept going on about being nice about him in a satisfaction survey we were allegedly going to be given - never saw any such thing, outbound or return! They also made a big pitch for tips for the driver, which was just annoying since most of us only had largish Peso / Dollar notes (or none at all, in our case) at that stage...plus i think those who wanted to tip would've worked out what that big wicker pot by the exit was for.

~ resort service ~
The resort itself was beyond paradise (El Dorado Royale, if you're wondering) but that's no reflection either way on FC since it's not their resort! I wanted a first floor room in one of the duplex blocks, but was unable to get that - i had heard rumours that this was becuase of FC's health & safety requirements, that their customers only ever get ground floor rooms - but i have no hard evidence as to whether that's true or not.

We didn't really use the rep's services in resort because we'd fixed everything up ourselves before arrival (car hire, excursions etc).

So overall, I'd say that FC took pretty much every opportunity to underwhelm us - difficulty speaking with them after booking, no airplane seat choice, inflight food, inefficient transfers - but without doing anything especially dreadful. I generally got the feeling that they weren't all that interested in the customer's experience, and didn't feel confident that they'd be any use if something had gone wrong during the trip.

Summary: Just don't expect much from them!