Problem with thomas cook! Help!

bagand96

Seeing as its Monarch Scheduled flights, have you booked a Thomas Cook package holiday? Or did you go into a Thomas Cook agency and they have put together a scheduled flight and a hotel booking?

If its a Thomas Cook package then I would find it strange as package holidays usually are a full 7 nights, so you would usually fly home on the 0215 Tuesday morning.

However I question whether it is a Thomas Cook package as its using Monarch Scheduled flights. Also on the Thomas Cook website there don't seem to be any Package holidays by TC departing Manchester on a Monday (the search yields results from Thomson though).

Monarch Ibiza flights can be confusing due to the times they operate (I know as I've been looking for IBZ flights myself!). Go to to monarch.co.uk now and input depart Manchester on Monday 20th June and return 27th June, this would be normal search criteria for a 7 night holiday, yes? The results give the outbound ZB502 departing Mon 20th at 2150. It offers you an inbound on Monday 27th, ZB509 departing IBZ at 0040. This is exactly your problem, it does not give a 7 night holiday. However, the Monarch site is not wrong, its offering you what you asked for. Its just confusing because of their late flight times.

It is my belief that you are not on a Thomas Cook packaged holiday, in fact your TC agent has themself "packaged" a flight and hotel. Who knows whether they realised what they were doing when booking the Monarch flights, I'd wager anyone could fall into the trap illustrated above. What exactly does your hotel booking say? 6 or 7 nights? If it says 6 then clearly the agent knew what they were doing, if its 7 nights, then its probably an error.

However, as others have stated above you will have been given an Invoice and confirmation, an probably signed something at the agents? Therefore you have agreed to all of this when booking.

If as i suspect this is the case, where you go from here is difficult. You could go to the agent and point out you have not got what you wanted etc and see if they will be willing to do anything. However they could just point out you signed the T&Cs and had all the details when booking...

budgetflyer

bagand96 , brilliant analysis

credittart

Thanks bagand96,

They have booked the trip using flexibletrips which is run by thomas cook. We booked it in our local thomas cook travel agents.

I spoke to the lady in the travel agents today and she told us it was just how monarch flights work, which I wasn't happy with, so I also spoke to someone at thomas cooks online help and she told me to go back and ask to speak to the manager as they can not access hotel bookings, so ill be doing that tomorrow.

The price breakdown confirms that the accomodation (ibiza rocks) is booked for 7 nights, it also says on the accomodation voucher that check out is by 12 noon. So basically we have a 7 night holiday which we will be coming back after 6 nights.

budgetflyer

check out 12 noon Monday? The advantage being, you will have accom right up untill you leave

bagand96

They have booked the trip using flexibletrips which is run by thomas cook. We booked it in our local thomas cook travel agents.

I spoke to the lady in the travel agents today and she told us it was just how monarch flights work, which I wasn't happy with, so I also spoke to someone at thomas cooks online help and she told me to go back and ask to speak to the manager as they can not access hotel bookings, so ill be doing that tomorrow.

The price breakdown confirms that the accomodation (ibiza rocks) is booked for 7 nights, it also says on the accomodation voucher that check out is by 12 noon. So basically we have a 7 night holiday which we will be coming back after 6 nights.

Ok, its as I suspected then, not a Thomas Cook package holiday, but a flight & hotel booking "packaged" separately.

Now saying "thats how the Monarch flights work" isn't strictly correct. They are scheduled flights that Monarch run nearly every day (Mon, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun), all they have done is book you on the Monday services, but being scheduled flights they were free to book you on any (i.e. the Tuesday flight home, giving the "standard" 7 night holiday).

However, if you go to the flexibletrips.com website and do a search for Flight & Hotel for 7 nights departing on a Monday, it returns exactly the same flights you've been booked on. The automated site is probably doing what I said in my last post, and selecting flights on a Monday automatically (even though the return is at 0040, only 40 mins into Monday - hence the problems!). I would wager this is exactly what happened for your Thomas Cook agent and it went unnoticed.

Strictly, to get your 7 night/7 day holiday you would want the Tuesday Monarch flight home, which is the return flight of the aircraft you fly out on. This is what would happen with a traditional package. The interesting thing, is that the flexibletrips website doesn't ask for departure and return date, just departure date and how many nights away. This may give you an angle, as you ask for a 7 night holiday but you don't strictly get it (I appreciate you didn't use the flexibletrips website directly, but same principle). That is what you need to go at them with. That said, you are still essentially getting 7 nights (its actually a day that you lose).

What will go against you, is that all of the information would have been presented to you when you booked and you would have signed to book. It may be a case of you doing some very clever negotiating with your agent, however it could go either way. They may hold you to the T&Cs (you did agree, and you would have seen this when booking). They could on the other hand be very co-operative and do something. Trouble is, to move those Monarch flights is going to incur a cost, probably quite a large one. I doubt your TC agent will be willing to absorb those.

Awkward situation, and probably no-one is at fault. I doubt this has been done deliberately, its just the awkward flight times causing problems in terms of an automated booking process. It would take quite a savvy person/agent to spot it at booking - but then arguably thats why you use an agent?

Finally, I wonder how many people turn up at IBZ in the small hours for their Monarch flights after a 7 night holiday, finding out they are 24 hours late?! Must have happened!