Thomas Cook Holidays (Thomas Cook)

Member Name: radders2009

Product:	Thomas Cook
Date:	09/03/09 (157 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Big company so should be good?

Disadvantages: Maybe they are too big and things are sometimes bad?

Just had a "Thomas Cook experience" and although you may think this is one of the bigger and better companies to go on your hols with, think again!. Maybe they are just too big and the individual experiences of some travellers don't matter (my personal opinion of course!).

I am not writing this just to have a moan. People who save their hard earned cash for a nice relaxing holiday with a large holiday company should be able to get some compensation when things go as badly wrong as my experience. A lot of people would also just put this down to bad luck and if so, the large holiday company has got away with poor service.

Its worth pointing out that if you have an "issue" about your holiday you should write a factual letter to Thomas Cook initially. You will the receive their standard "we are sorry but we can't do anything" response and you should follow up, again with facts, refering directly to their responses to your original complaints.

Don't be fobbed off with their first response. Also the web is full of similar experiences and people have even written to the National press before getting anywhere with Thomas Cook.

Its also worth writing to their top brass as well as ABTA if your first response is not satisfactory.

The example below may help and it got me a refund in the end....


Your Reference: 26037166/K019931G dated 11 November 2008

Dear Ms Rice,

Zakynthos, 02/10/08

Thank you for your response to my original letter on this matter (full copy of letter and additional attachments provided for additional recipients) written on behalf of your directors.

You have expressed how "disappointed" and "concerned" you are that we have had cause to write to you about our recent holiday at Nikos Studio Apartments. We too were disappointed especially when the Thomas Cook and Manos "promise to customers" as shown on page 270 of your Manos Holidays Greece and Cyprus brochure May2009 - October 2009, specifically states that your

"aim is to exceed your holiday expectations, in the hope that you will choose Manos as your preferred holiday every time"

This was clearly not the case for ourselves, other customers that took the same action as we did on arrival and others based on reviews available on the internet.

You make the point of apologising for our outbound flight and that you are unable to compensate for this. We are not looking for any compensation for this and our original letter didn't suggest that we were as we simply listed the main points regarding departure to arrival for your information. The flight problems were not in your, or our control, and these events cannot be anticipated. As we suggested, communication and representation at the airport in Athens could have been better and you, as a company, may wish to act on this?

You also comment that you are sorry that, on arrival at Nikos Studio apartments, we were "clearly unhappy with the standard of accommodation" and that you "would expect the management of the properties that we feature to ensure that our high standards are met". Quite obviously your high standards were not met and we would refer you to our original letter detailing the state of the accommodation. We note with some concern that Nikos is advertised on page 71 of your brochure as detailed in our second paragraph above. The picture looks fabulous as it did when we booked our holiday in your Coventry branch of Thomas Cook and the accommodation is described as "small, clean and tidy". We again refer you back to our previous letter regarding the accommodation. We are happy to agree that the rooms are small but they are most definitely not clean and tidy. The description in your brochure is therefore very misleading we believe. We fully understand that if you advertised Nikos rooms as being small, not clean and untidy, you would probably have very few customers making a booking. We strongly believe though that it is unfair and unprofessional to "suggest" the accommodation is something it is not. We also understand that you offer these holidays based on information regarding resorts, hotels, apartments that are obviously gathered on your behalf. We accept that there is a possibility that initially, Nikos Studio Apartments did meet with your "high standards" however we would challenge yourself and your directors to actually visit the accommodation and honestly rate it against your high standards as, actually being there, on the ground, at the location is very very different to the picture and description in your brochure.

You state that "having looked into our records for this property, I can confirm that most of our customers hold a good opinion of their stay there. And few complaints are received with regard to general quality or cleanliness issues" Unless we are mistaken, this confirms then that some of your customers do not have a good opinion and that some complaints are received regarding quality and cleanliness. This is exactly the point we made in our first letter and we are concerned that even with this knowledge in your possession via your records, customers such as ourselves can still make the bookings, pay the money in good faith, look forward to an enjoyable holiday and then be confronted with a situation as we found on arrival. In our opinion, you have a duty of care on the behalf of your customers to ensure that the holiday is as advertised in your brochure. By your own admission, you have had previous "issues" regarding the property and therefore these should be resolved before any more customers are allowed to spend their money and travel to this destination.
You also state that you "regret to note that you did not view the alternative offered by our representative before deciding this was not appropriate". We did not view the alternative as we were told that this couldn't be arranged until the following day. Again, referring to my previous letter, the accommodation was such that we could not stay in it for one night and felt we had no alternative other than to leave due to the state of the room and basic practicalities such as no hot water to wash with. You also say that you "hope that the alternative accommodation you found independently was more suitable for you". The alternative accommodation was suitable as it was clean, tidy and fit for purpose unlike Nikos Studio Apartments. You go on to say that you understand "your personal dislike on this occasion and I am sorry you felt unable to stay there " but that you do feel that "this was down to your personal expectations". We can confirm that we disliked what was offered compared to what was shown in the brochure and we can also confirm that our personal expectation was clean and tidy accommodation with the basic amenities such as hot water. We are sure that your expectations of the accommodation should be closely aligned to ours and if it didn't meet your high standards, you too would be disappointed and feel that you would have cause for complaint. It is also extremely relevant to point out that we have been contacted by two other couples who arrived on the same day as us and have similar complaints. You will have had letters of complaint from a Mr and Mrs Nelson and a Mr and Mrs Mealing. We are not aware of the full details of their complaints but we would be very surprised if their experiences were very different to ours. This in our opinion confirms that our experience is not just down to our "personal expectations" and there is a larger problem that needs to be addressed instead of trying to ignore the issues. We are not prepared, in general, to document anything but facts in this or previous letters and have purposely not written this with an emotional slant. Nor would we include hearsay but we were told by other couples who stayed over at Nikos on the first night of arrival that on the following morning they witnessed ash trays being washed in the swimming pool. We cannot confirm this although you have been made aware of this in other complaint letters apparently and this, if confirmed, should give you a very good idea about the general attitude to cleanliness at Nikos Studio Apartments. If this did occur in full view of the guests, which is apparently what happened, then it is no surprise that cleanliness and maintenance throughout the accommodation is treated with the very same careless attitude.

You make a comment regarding compensation stating that you are "unable to offer compensation for the issues you have raised on this occasion". We are alarmed by your next sentence which states "I can assure you that despite this, your comments with regard to the property have been noted and passed on to our Customer Assurance department. They will use these in their continuous work with the hotelier to help us to try and ensure customer satisfaction in the future". This is not good enough. Your company should always continue working with the hoteliers, we agree, but you have had "issues" before and you should have been ensuring, not trying to ensure that we, your customers, experienced a holiday that exceeded our holiday expectations as per your company's "Promise" which incidentally, is the first words in your brochure under the Holiday Information section on page 270.

You then go on to thank us for taking the time to write and you hope that we will consider travelling with Thomas Cook again in the future so that "we have the chance to restore your faith". We think that after our experience and how important it was to have to write the first letter, the final comment in your letter dated 11 November 2008 is absurd to say the least and we feel insulted by it. Our faith was place firmly in your hands when we booked the holiday. Our faith was still alive when we paid for the holiday. Our faith was still intact despite the long flight as this was unavoidable. The point where our faith in your company was finally lost was when we walked into the room at Nikos Studio Apartments, were shocked at what we found, what your company had supplied, what your company had suggested in the brochure and, quite frankly, what we had effectively wasted our money on.

Our request for a level of compensation therefore still stands.

We look forward to a response from you and the other parties copied on this letter as soon as possible prior to considering our next course of action.

Many thanks,

Steve Radburn





Additional Copies forwarded to:
Peter Constantini

Executive Director Holidays Division
Thomas Cook
Customer Relations Department
2 - 4 Godwin Street
Bradford
West Yorkshire
BD1 1SD
Copy of this letter, a covering letter and the original dated 28/10/2008 forwarded to:

Consumer Affairs Department
ABTA Ltd
68-71 Newman Street
London
W1T 3AH



Letter emailed to:
customer.relations@thomascook.com

Summary: Don't accept a bad holiday experience was just one of those things!!