One disastrous holiday - Weymouth Bay Park (Haven Holidays in general)

Member Name: Clare7

Product:	Haven Holidays in general
Date:	21/08/09 (135 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Theres a lot of facilities in the park

Disadvantages: Staff communication

In April 2009 I visited Weymouth Bay with my parents and grandmother.

We have visited various haven parks for years and been satisfied with our holidays, but this time was different:

On arrival at the caravan we found we had 3 light bulbs needing replacement, which is understandable if the caravan hasn't been used for a while. We called reception and the problem was sorted within an hour.

The following day at 4pm we realised we didn't have any electricity, which also meant we didn't have any hot water or heating. We used a mobile phone to ring over to reception, they then sent someone within an hour who fixed the problem, we were told the fuse box kept tripping but he didn't know why.

The next morning about 10 o'clock once again we realised we had no electricity; we phoned reception who told us they would send someone straight round. At this point we were just about to go out for the day but had to wait in for someone to fix our problem. So we waited and waited, it got to 11.30, and at this point I walked over to reception to ask what was going on. They told us to go out as the problem could be fixed from outside.

We went out for the day and got back to the caravan at around 4.30pm, expecting to have the electricity on. But it was still off; once again we rang reception and told them we had no electricity. We waited until 6 o'clock then someone arrived, he told us he couldn't fix the problem and we needed an electrician, he told us the electrician should be here within half an hour. We told the man that we had phoned earlier and were told the problem could be fixed from outside, he told us someone had been over earlier in the day but couldn't fix the problem. Surely this person should have reported it rather than leave it for us to sort out when we got back.

We waited an hour until 7pm and the electrician hadn't arrived. We were starting to worry at this point as it was getting colder and soon would be getting dark. As reception was shut we went over and found a security person, who then got hold of another person to come and look at the caravan. He arrived after 15 minutes, did something outside and the power came back on. However 5 minutes after he had gone it was off again, we rang the same man, who came back and said our fuse box needed replacement and the electrician would be round shortly.

The problem was fixed at 8pm, 10 hours after we had initially reported the problem.

We paid nearly £400 for a prestige caravan to ensure we would have heating in bedrooms etc, we were lucky enough to have a centrally heated caravan but unfortunately we were unable to use this for the majority of the time due to no electricity. We had 2 elderly people in the caravan, one of them 80 years old, we were sat in there from 4.30 until 8 with no heating, and no hot water and we couldn't even boil the kettle.

You go on holiday to relax but we found it more stressful than relaxing.
It's not good enough that it took 10 hours to fix a problem which took 15 minutes to fix.

I realise the problems I had were through no fault of the company but I believe the communication between staff is awful.

On my return home I sent an email to haven complaining about what had happened, we were told they would investigate and get back to us, a few weeks later they sent us a voucher for a free upgrade next time we go on holiday.

Summary: Overall this holiday was spoilt by the problems which kept occuring.