Planning a holiday? Avoid SOTC alias Kuoni Travels! (Kuoni Travel)

Member Name: Mayank Agarwal

Product:	Kuoni Travel
Date:	02/03/08 (932 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Bad deals, pathetic service, rude attitude, terrible experience

Planning a holiday? Avoid SOTC alias Kuoni Travels!

The tag line of SOTC is 'Expect more'. However, given our horrific experience during a recent vacation that we booked thru them probably 'Expect more- Stress!' rings truer.
Given that SOTC is a big brand name the minimum one would expect is good service, decent holiday deals and proper planning. However they fail miserably even on these basic hygiene factors. To begin with the actual plan and package rate that they deliver is nowhere close to the original plan and quote- on the basis of which you pay them the advance booking money. In our case the final rate was nearly double and the plan was completely different from what was originally quoted. E.g we had clearly specified that we wanted good quality hotels and were instead presented with shady hotels in poor locations. To add to this the service is appallingly slow and requires endless follow up from the customer and the service staff is rude- they act like they are doing you a big favour by planning your holiday. Of course you get to experience this rudeness only if you are able to get through to them in the first place. After a few days of harrowing follow up and no response from their side we finally went to the SOTC office worried that we would have to cancel our holiday if the plan was not finalized soon- only to find that almost all of the executives there had kept their phones off the hook during office hours- while they ambled around chatting with their colleagues! If all this was not enough they further added to our woes by messing up the transport arrangements during our trip- for which we again had to shell out extra money to rectify the same.
Still recovering from the hellish SOTC experience we would definitely recommend NOT approaching them if you are planning a holiday. They do deliver on one thing though- they give you so much stress that at the end of the SOTC experience, even if you didnt need a holiday before you will definitely need one after!

Summary: Bad deals, pathetic service, rude attitude, terrible experience