☼ Sunshine and great service... ☼ (Thomson Holidays)

Member Name: burtybookworm

Product:	Thomson Holidays
Date:	16/11/08 (225 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: efficient, friendly very helpful, everything ran smoothly, great website

Disadvantages: they didnt send our tickets in time!

Due to my boyfriends tax rebate, we decided to treat ourselves (after losing money on our first holiday) to a week away somewhere fairly hot in November. I was told by bf that with the money we were getting, we could stay in the best hotel we could find.

After settling on a holiday to Tunisia, I went on to Trip Advisor to see what the best rated hotels were, and this is where I came across the Riu Palace Oceana in Hammamet, Tunisia. (A Review has been written on this, I'm just waiting on the product proposal to come through from dooyoo so that I can post it!!)
After scrolling through teletext and expedia, it appears that they do not sell this hotel as part of their packages, eventually we came across the Thomson website, where they DID!

A bit about the Website Service
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Thomson, as most of you might be aware, are one of the larger travel agents in this country selling holidays around the world. I won't bore you with the other stuff, if you aren't aware of the details, then a visit to their (very) comprehensive site should answer some questions for you -
www.thomson.co.uk.

Just to say that this website is really quite excellent, Thomson sell holidays to almost all destinations across the world, they will give you a brief outline of the country/area you are interested in along with some recommended hotels. Once you have the hotel you are interested in, there are lots of pictures, a video, a full list of facilities, location details, map, their rating and probably most importantly, the guest rating and very honest reviews of the hotel. (I've read some quite damning ones of other hotels, so I can say that they are fairly honest. Plus the Oceana hotel was truly excellent, so they got that right too!)

At this point, boyfriend and I were certain this was the hotel for us. We could have booked online, but then he realised that one of his fireman buddies wife worked for a local Thomson's and so suggested that I call her and see if we could get it any cheaper.

Branch Service
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Obviously, because our husbands/boyfriends are friends I had an excellent service from the woman at this branch! As well as knowing what hotel we wanted and knowing the rough dates we wanted to go, the transaction between myself and the travel agent went smoothly. She ran through all the details with me about the hotel and the area, we did get a slight discount from the online quote but not much as it's a premium hotel, and I paid by credit card (waiting for the rebate money to come through meant we had to risk it!!) I was told that we would be getting the confirmation through the post, but she gave me a reference over the phone and said I should call her if I had any further questions.
An important thing to note is that she did not push me in to getting the insurance. She told me how much the insurance was but then also told me that it was very likely I could get a good deal elsewhere online - although this may have been again as we had partners in common and she felt like being more friendly!!
The details from the Thomson branch came through a couple of days later and I filed them away for November.

The Holiday
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The morning of the holiday arrived and as you can imagine, I was extremely excited! My last week off was last Christmas and after a hectic six months working on Britain From Above as well as the upset of our aborted Sorrento holiday in July, I desperately needed a break, so I was literally jumping up and down on the bed with excitement! I'd made sure we had everything in a plastic wallet ready as we had to leave for the airport at 2.30am the next morning, so I had the information sent to me by Thomson, our parking details, passport and our insurance details. All ready to go!

That is until my boyfriend picked these bits up when I was rushing around at 2 in the morning. He gave me a look and said "Have you read this properly?"......

Basically, I had assumed that the information that was sent through by Thomson was an E-ticket - It had a reference number on there but it turns out it was a Thomson reference number and actually at the very bottom was the words that made me heart sink - "should you have not received your ticket 2 weeks before your due travel date, please contact us giving your reference number."
By this point I was distraught, annoyed with myself and very very upset! I had NOT received any tickets through the post and as I had stupidly not read through everything I had NOT called up to chase it!

We decided to get in the car and drive to the airport anyway - I had not been in this situation before so I wasn't sure how we would get it resolved. Boyfriend was laughing because every time we book something, it usually goes wrong, and he is so easy going he didn't blame me at all, "Its only money!" he said! Hah!

Anyway, I came across a 24 hour number on the paperwork I was sent, so I gave that a ring. The phone was answered almost immediately at 2.30am by a very pleasant man who listened to what I had to say, and then immediately reassured me that it should be fine, I should just go to the Thomson desk with my reference number and explain the situation and they would be able to issue me with new tickets. If there was any problem, I was to call him back immediately (he gave me his name too) and he said he would do his best to sort it out.
Relief!
Similarly, when we arrived at the Thomson desk at Gatwick, the man on the desk was extremely helpful and very sympathetic and immediately printed off new tickets for me.

Conclusion
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So, some people might be reading this thinking that it was a given that we were going to get new tickets, but I had no idea whether we were or not, I just thought I had ruined our holiday and we weren't going to go anywhere! Admittedly it was our own fault for not checking the tickets, but of course Thomson are partly responsible for not sending the tickets to me also.

As a final note, I'd also like to say that the Thomson flight was on time, efficient, the cabin crew were helpful, there was a good selection of programmes to watch on the flight and everything went smoothly. Also the rep for our hotel couldn't have been more helpful, she didn't push us into any excursions, gave us her mobile number and told us to call her any time if there was a problem and warned us of scams that might happen during our stay.
Similarly, when we arrived at Monastir airport upon arrival and departure, we were greeted immediately by a Thomson's rep and taken to our minibus (we were the only ones on it for both journeys which was quite nice!)
On our flight back to the UK, the same rep greeted us and told us that our flight was on time. Very efficient and very friendly!

Despite the tickets not being issued, I really cannot fault the service provided by Thomson. Everything from their website, to their staff and service was fantastic and any issues were ironed out immediately. After all, mistakes happen eh, we aren't all perfect!!

Summary: Would book through them again!