Sri Lanka wedding - copy certificate & complaint
ahudson
Forumite 3 Posts
I'm looking for advice about my experience, what you think I should do next and if anyone has encountered the same thing?
My fiance & I decided in May 2017 to get married in Sri Lanka in Sept 2017. We booked our holiday & wedding through Virgin Holidays.
Unfortunately, Virgin wedding team were terrible with our booking. Not confirming legal requirements, wedding package details, ignoring various emails etc. In the end I had to contact the Sri Lanka High Commission & the hotel directly to confirm what was required of us. It was all very stressful. Our wedding details were not finally confirmed until 10am on the day of our 9pm flight to Sri Lanka!
The wedding went smoothly and we had a lovely day but we were so disappointed with the service that we wrote a lengthy complaint explaining the situation and asking Virgin to make sure that their team knows the legal requirements of weddings in each country as it is possible that another couple may have the same problems as us but not have the same happy ending.
After 2 months of writing the complaint, and chasing a response!, we had a call from someone on the complaints team to say "Thank you for the feedback, we have passed this on" it was a few minutes long and felt a little dis genuine and a fob off.
Unfortunately we are still having problems 6 months later.
We were told by the hotel that the wedding certificate would take up to 4 months to be sent us (it needed to be registered & translated to English) so we thought everything was all okay until January when we still had no certificate.
We contacted Virgin to ask them to chase the certificate as we thought they may be experience in the process and would assist us. Well 2 months later, a lot of chasing both Virgin and the hotel, we have no certificate. I have copied our contact at Virgin into all emails to the hotel chasing and my last response was "I note your emails, if you need my assistance please let me know." You would think that seeing so many emails between me and the hotel that it would be clear I need assistance. At the moment, I have been asked for £25 and a completed form (for which I do not know most of the details such as the registrar etc) in order to get copies of the certificate.
If I am honest, my husband(?) and I are concerned that our wedding has not been registered and there is no certificate!
I complained to Virgin again hoping that they would deal with getting the copies but the reply has been that they struggled to get in contact with the hotel for the details and something was wrong with their weddings system. I have been offered £100 Virgin Experience gift card.
My questions/advice needed are:
1. Has anyone needed to get copies of their certificates from Sri Lanka before?
2. Would you complain further? What would you say?
Any help/comments would be appreciated!
My fiance & I decided in May 2017 to get married in Sri Lanka in Sept 2017. We booked our holiday & wedding through Virgin Holidays.
Unfortunately, Virgin wedding team were terrible with our booking. Not confirming legal requirements, wedding package details, ignoring various emails etc. In the end I had to contact the Sri Lanka High Commission & the hotel directly to confirm what was required of us. It was all very stressful. Our wedding details were not finally confirmed until 10am on the day of our 9pm flight to Sri Lanka!
The wedding went smoothly and we had a lovely day but we were so disappointed with the service that we wrote a lengthy complaint explaining the situation and asking Virgin to make sure that their team knows the legal requirements of weddings in each country as it is possible that another couple may have the same problems as us but not have the same happy ending.
After 2 months of writing the complaint, and chasing a response!, we had a call from someone on the complaints team to say "Thank you for the feedback, we have passed this on" it was a few minutes long and felt a little dis genuine and a fob off.
Unfortunately we are still having problems 6 months later.
We were told by the hotel that the wedding certificate would take up to 4 months to be sent us (it needed to be registered & translated to English) so we thought everything was all okay until January when we still had no certificate.
We contacted Virgin to ask them to chase the certificate as we thought they may be experience in the process and would assist us. Well 2 months later, a lot of chasing both Virgin and the hotel, we have no certificate. I have copied our contact at Virgin into all emails to the hotel chasing and my last response was "I note your emails, if you need my assistance please let me know." You would think that seeing so many emails between me and the hotel that it would be clear I need assistance. At the moment, I have been asked for £25 and a completed form (for which I do not know most of the details such as the registrar etc) in order to get copies of the certificate.
If I am honest, my husband(?) and I are concerned that our wedding has not been registered and there is no certificate!
I complained to Virgin again hoping that they would deal with getting the copies but the reply has been that they struggled to get in contact with the hotel for the details and something was wrong with their weddings system. I have been offered £100 Virgin Experience gift card.
My questions/advice needed are:
1. Has anyone needed to get copies of their certificates from Sri Lanka before?
2. Would you complain further? What would you say?
Any help/comments would be appreciated!
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Replies
What have the hotel said about the certificate?
I wouldn't bother trying to get Virgin to sort it out, their weddings team seems to be utterly useless, and I'd probably just take the voucher rather than trying to deal with their infuriating, don't-actually-listen-to-you, customer services.
The package was originally sent with the wrong address & returned to the hotel but re-sent this the correct address a week or so later. We were not expecting the certificate so soon so when the CD and photos arrived we were happy but not surprised the certificate was not there. We thought the certificate would arrive a few months later.
The certificate was not in the package and the hotel are adamant that it was enclosed. I contacted DHL (who delivered the package) and they have said the invoice only listed a CD and photos enclosed.
As the hotel are saying they sent the original certificate, we will have to get copies.
I would tweet them or write on their Facebook page. When you complain publicly it usually gets a quicker response
My concern is that the hotel are saying they have posted the certificate but it doesn!!!8217;t seem to be the case. If they have posted it, we would have received it. Obtaining a copy seems to be harder than getting the originals certified.
Thank you for the advice about complaining publicly.