change holiday??

deeb604

Hi I have booked a holiday through direct holidays for August 2011 to Hurghada Egypt. I have already paid nearly £600 of £1900 balance. I booked over the telephone into a hotel I have never been before in fact I have never been to Egypt. I am a single mom with 2 children who will be 12 and 13 next year, my youngest is autistic. I went to Palma Nova this year and had to move hotel the second day as the hotel was so bad, although i loved the hotel we changed to. I had looked on trip advisor at this years hotel and seen quite a few bad reveiws however i decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. After what happended this year when I got home i looked up next years hotel and see its had really bad reviews this year about people being ill at the hotel, now i dont want to risk it. i have decided i would like to transfer my holiday to palma nova for ten days in the hotel we transferred to this year. I telephoned direct holidays today and they want to charge me £220 to transfer as an administration charge to move me and the two children. They were no able to justify such high charges to transfer a holiday nearly 12 months away, any advice? Sorry to rattle on!

geordieracer

ok what is your main point here? They are charging you to change your holiday? Seems fair to me as they now have to fill the space you have just vacated.

Also dont trust trip advisor all the time. Its not the b all of reviews and can be quite wrong at times

mum2one

In all honestly, agree with trip advsor, that everybodies views differ, and if some people have a gripe there more liable to put in on sites. Digressing but, I recently had good service in Sainsburys, so I made a point of speaking to a manger to say - how excellent this member of staff had been, we were cahtting, and he was a bit shocked as 99% of people complain.

Re the charges - you've most proberly come off better, as they could of charged you the cancellation fee - which is your depoist.

I can understand where your coming from, I'm disabled on crutches, so really need totake care where booking etc, no good on a hillside.

Another thought is, start a thread as anyone been to xx hotel on here, your get honest answers.

Do hope you get it sorted. x

phatbear

A change of hotel and country and they only want £70 odd per person for such a change seems like an acceptable charge to me, we've changed hotels before now and it cost us far more than that.

Regarding trip advisor people tend to leave reviews when something goes wrong add to that the fake reviews you should take their feedback with a pinch of salt.

bevvy

Sorry, but if you had a bad experience this year, then why did you not look at tripadvisor before you booked your egypt holiday for next year. Ok, £220 does seem alot to change, but atleast they are allowing you to change, and after all it is your own fault, not Direct Holidays fault you want to change, could you imagine what things would be like if everyone booked a holiday and then decided later that they had changed their mind and wanted to go somewhere else.

ferf1223

i got the impression that the OP had booked Egypt before the recent bad experience...still, it stuns me how many people book something without reading any reviews. No, review sites are not guaranteed to give the full picture, but if all/most reviews are bad I tend to think that it may be worth steering clear. A few bad reviews along with some good ones could be isolated things...lots and lots of bad reviews would worry me too...but I always research a lot before I book anything. I agree with those that think £70pp to change is not that much, considering how much they COULD charge.

geordieracer

bevvy wrote: »

Sorry, but if you had a bad experience this year, then why did you not look at tripadvisor before you booked your egypt holiday for next year. Ok, £220 does seem alot to change, but atleast they are allowing you to change, and after all it is your own fault, not Direct Holidays fault you want to change, could you imagine what things would be like if everyone booked a holiday and then decided later that they had changed their mind and wanted to go somewhere else.

Tripadvisor is rubbish though - you cant really tell me you believe everything that is written on there can you?

ferf1223

geordieracer wrote: »

Tripadvisor is rubbish though - you cant really tell me you believe everything that is written on there can you?

Of course not, but you can still read reviews and get a general feel...if loads and loads of bad reviews, that doesn't bode very well...if some good, some bad, it's anyone's guess. Obviously people are more likely to leave a negative review, so you do have to take some with a grain of salt...but if a place gets consistently poor reviews, probably better to give it a miss.

geordieracer

ferf1223 wrote: »

Of course not, but you can still read reviews and get a general feel...if loads and loads of bad reviews, that doesn't bode very well...if some good, some bad, it's anyone's guess. Obviously people are more likely to leave a negative review, so you do have to take some with a grain of salt...but if a place gets consistently poor reviews, probably better to give it a miss.

Or it could be competitors writing bad reviews every week ..

doesnt take Einstein to sign up a hotmail account for that very purpose

deeb604

geordieracer wrote: »

Tripadvisor is rubbish though - you cant really tell me you believe everything that is written on there can you?

Actually 2 years running people have been spot on on both watchdog and trip advisor so in my opinion i wish id listened, now going to learn by my mistakes. Im sure people would hopefully have better to do than sit and write negative reviews on hotels they've never visited.

geordieracer

deeb604 wrote: »

Actually 2 years running people have been spot on on both watchdog and trip advisor so in my opinion i wish id listened, now going to learn by my mistakes. Im sure people would hopefully have better to do than sit and write negative reviews on hotels they've never visited.

So now your saying you shouldnt read said website for your overall view on somewhere?

confusing.


All i am saying is that you should not take website reviews to be what they say they are.