Travel agents..waste of time

gabyjane

Not happy, today was my only day this week i can sort out our holiday (cruise) so decided to go down and let them do the work seeing as i was getting nowhere online! So i got in our local one (cruise specialists) and sat down, was in there 1 hour at least doing various ones. Guess i am the worse customer as said that basically we wanted either jan, feb or march...no less than 9 nights no more than 2 weeks and somewhere hot but places like, asia, carribean, usa, etc as opposed to med..just pull up what you can..she did then we had a quick look at disney cruises for 2 weeks and off i went happy with my quotes..

Went to the next one as they as a rule always beat the first ones so sat down, the girl did a quick quote on 1 i had there and it was roughly £2k over the previous one i had, she kept saying this can't be right...and after ringing through we realised that that 1st lady hadn't added the prices up correctly..grrr..so i was completely thrown and we did some more with the correct prices!

Thing is (and i know the areas are so so different) we went on a 2 week cruise last oct round the med with 8 stops and got married onboard, the whole lot including everything i can think of was around the £3.5k mark..poss £4k tops so to get the figures i got from the first lady were not bad really..i will put below the first and second quotes! these are for me, dh and dd who will be 11 yrs..

• 11 night ..came in at first place at £2402...should have been £3756
• Another similar was £3636 should have been £5801
• Another £2192 should have been £3426

So as you can imagine a real waste of time as not sure what is right wrong or where any of it goes now..the disney one came in at just under or over as she did 2 at £4k..

I am so lost and dont know where to start! When dh and i booked our wedding one it was the easiest one i have ever done, we rang through and did it there and then, very easy and stress free and cheap...fab boat (p&O) and service etc..SO i am i being unreasonable not wanting to pay the prices quoted below or is that the norm? One ends up being basically £5000 for just me and dh alone and all these are for inside rooms not anything fancy!!

HELP!!

stephb34

Customers waste of time, cant find what they want on the internet so expect the travel agent to perform miracles. Customers dont know where or when they want to go and expect you to check everything. Customers hours of your time, then take the info down the road for an extra £5 discount. People go on holiday in october round the mediteranean and want to go a completely different time of year to the caribbean and expect it to be cheaper. Get the drift, if your confused and the 1st travel agents were cheaper why dont you ring her back (can enquire over the phone if you cant pop back in) and ask her to clarify the prices tell her what you got at the other 1 and then see which 1 of them has got it wrong. People dont understand searching for a cruise isnt like looking for a package holiday to spain where you can be more indecisive with dates, durations etc, you have to search each cruise specifically as they vary so much. Hope you get what you want.

whitts

I agree with steph, i think you are being really harsh with yout thread

sorry.

we all use the service and knowledge of shops on the high street, we need to support them

richardw

gabyjane wrote: »

we went on a 2 week cruise last oct round the med with 8 stops and got married onboard, the whole lot including everything i can think of was around the £3.5k mark..poss £4k tops

Sounds a lot of money for an October holiday in the Med.

sturll

whitts wrote: »

I agree with steph, i think you are being really harsh with yout thread

sorry.

we all use the service and knowledge of shops on the high street, we need to support them

No we don't.

For years the TA was the only way to get yourself on a holiday. This was monopolised upon and people were ripped off in a huge way. This still happens today. Every other week a TA is on watchdog. You only have to browse Consumer Direct to see that TA's are a major form of complaints.

They are rip off merchants and profit off people who are not clued up enough to book things independently.

cannyscot_2

I'm afraid I half agree with Sturll. I watched about 10 people looking in the travel agents window today and wondered what the heck they were up to! We travel all over the world -most folks are pretty envious of our hols-but we book everything DIY online and pay a fraction of what the travel agents pay. I have been doing this for 12 years on the internet and my kids are the best travelled kids I know. I recently did ask in the travel agents for Florida in case it was better as a friend assured me they had a brill deal but it was still £600 cheaper to DIY.

I suppose though it is a bit of work but I quite like it.

satan666wayne

I would book with a us agent http://www.wdwinfo.com/discounts/discounts-cruise.htm#magic http://www.disboards.com/announcement.php?f=47&a=220
and book flights with virgin atlantic into orlando if you want a disney cruise.

Marty_J

I booked flights to Dallas last year with my local Co-op TravelCare, and they were the cheapest I could find by about £100. They couldn't find the flights at the price I saw on their website, so they reduced their price so they could match it. And they only had my word that I saw it cheaper.

I also booked flights to Memphis last year through Opodo, and it was a nightmare. The airline changed the times of my flights, and I couldn't make the new ones. It took Opodo about 3 weeks to sort it out (with only another 2 weeks to spare), which involved endless calls to India.

No complaints about travel agents here.

casevlloyds

sturll wrote: »

No we don't.

They are rip off merchants and profit off people who are not clued up enough to book things independently.

Some what of a generalisation!! :rolleyes:

Not all travel agents are rip off merchants thanks! I have been in the business for over 10 years and the majority of my business now has moved away from the typical package holiday market. Alot of business now is atol packaging where we put holidays together for clients using any available airline (including lo-cost) and accomodation and transfers separately. This means we are doing exactly what the client could do for themselves but booking through us they get the financial protection they wouldnt get on the internet - 95% of the time at exactly the same price if not cheaper than they could get themselves. Although there are still many occasions when a typical package is the cheapest option for a particular holiday.

Many people are not as travel/internet savvy as yourself and are happy to use the knowledge and experience and also financial protection an agent offers.

In the current climate booking travel and accomodation etc independantly can be a minefield. I'm sure the many thousands of people who booked flights direct on the internet with XL and lost their money will vouch for that


From my interpretation of the opening post the OP couldnt find/couldnt be bothered to look/didnt have a clue what she wanted therefor wanted the assistance of the agent. It seems the first agent made some sort of mistake with the costings. When the second agent did her job correctly and quoted correct prices the OP got annoyed that the holidays she wanted were over her budget and thus branded all travel agents useless :rolleyes:

Calvinandhobbs

stephb34 wrote: »

Customers waste of time, cant find what they want on the internet so expect the travel agent to perform miracles. Customers dont know where or when they want to go and expect you to check everything. Customers hours of your time, then take the info down the road for an extra £5 discount. People go on holiday in october round the mediteranean and want to go a completely different time of year to the caribbean and expect it to be cheaper. Get the drift, if your confused and the 1st travel agents were cheaper why dont you ring her back (can enquire over the phone if you cant pop back in) and ask her to clarify the prices tell her what you got at the other 1 and then see which 1 of them has got it wrong. People dont understand searching for a cruise isnt like looking for a package holiday to spain where you can be more indecisive with dates, durations etc, you have to search each cruise specifically as they vary so much. Hope you get what you want.

Steph, I would agree with you if it weren't for the way you have written it, you are acting exactly like the OP, just you are sitting on the other side of the fence (I appreciate you were upset by what you had read though). You are generalising in just the same way, not all "customers waste time"; I could have got my holiday (slightly) cheaper on the web, but as the TA had spent her time going through destinations etc with me I felt it was only fair to book through her (I thought she is maybe on commission?)

I do think though you have to expect that people will shop around, no doubt you also pick up the fruits of another TA's time spent with a customer whom you then make the sale to? It's swings and roundabouts. Surely to do searches, advise and assist is your job? The reason customers come to you is because you are the self-proclaimed experts on where to travel to and when, of course people don't understand that searching for a cruise is different, because they aren't trained in it, you are. Surely it is good that people still come through your door? Especially as the horror stories from the past have put many people off using TA's, I must admit, after reading your post about how we "waste time" by daring to shop around and save some money, I wish I had booked direct over the net and saved that extra bit of money.

I think you have done TA's a bit of a bad service here (at the risk of generalising myself!), you've made me feel like customers are a damned inconvenience.

stephb34

Sturll, i'm not completely sure that its the travel agents that are always on watchdog etc, think it maybe the actual tour operators although correct me if i'm wrong (which i'm sure you will lol) and i agree its better we have more choice.

Cannyscot I'm glad you like DIY holidays and get a bargain but not everyone has access to the internet and some people would sooner trust a Travel Agent than the internet, also alot of the travel experts are actually recommending that packages may well be cheaper this year than diy as the tour operators purchased the hotels and flights etc last year when the euro & $ etc were better value.

Calvinandhobbs.
Appreciate your point of view and of course customers aren't an inconvenience, i am a customer myself. Perhaps i was a little incensed by what i read but i'm sure most Travel Agents agree in principal with what i said but probably wouldn't have been quite so blunt.
There's nothing wrong with shopping around we all like to save money (thats the whole point of the website), but like Martin himself says Don't take to much of peoples time if your shopping about and go back to the 1st travel agent who did the most work and give them the chance to match the new deal you've got and if they cant, book it with the 1 who's given you the best deal but at least the 1st TA has had the chance to do something about it.

Lastly just thought i'd tell you this see what you think.
Two months ago my friend who is a TA in one of the big 4 stores had a couple ask about Mexico, she gave them a very good deal and they went home and booked it on the internet on the shops own website for a dearer price than the TA had given them, why we're not sure. Then swine flu happened and this couple rang the TA immediately wanting to know what was going on, would they be able to go , when would they get their money back etc and of course she couldnt help them as she didnt have the details of their booking so they then spent hours on the phone trying to get an answer. Which what i'm trying to say is if you want to do it yourself then great, not a problem, but then when something goes wrong why do you want the TA to sort it out for you when your intention in the 1st place was to cut out the middleman.