Lastminute.com, "Top Secret" deals - Don't bother - Worrying Customer Service

Steve_xx

loobylou2 wrote: »

I"ve got a problem with Last Minute at the moment as well. We booked named accomodation for a weeks break in Spain over the summer holidays and actually reached the hotel we were booked into before being advised that our booking had been changed. Understandably with 3 kids under 10 years of age in tow and after a long journey I was not happy... Last minute.com had plenty of time to let me know about the alteration, in fact they could have e mailed me or called me at home up to 11.30 am on the day of departure. We went to the alternative accomodation which was perfectly adequate for our needs but not what I had either booked or paid for. I have now contacted Last minute twice by E mail to find out what went wrong and to see if we can get a refund of any difference in price for the accomodation we stayed in as the hotel was not a 4* which we had paid for but a 3* The last contact I had from Last Minute was to say that they were investigating but this was 6 weeks ago now. How long should I give them before I take this further as I'm not happy with the service we received and we they haven"t even had the decency to apologise yet for the inconvienience and stress they caused???

This is breach of contract - plain and simple. Find out what you believe the difference in price was between the two, and then write to them telling them that you are waiting to receive the appropriate refund. Tell them that you will be looking to receive this refund within seven days of the date of the letter and tell them that if it is not forthcoming that you will start proceedings in the County Court. Not forgetting to remind them that you will add and seek to recover any costs that you incur in issuing the court proceedings.

withabix

Deleted - was incorrect!

duchy

So the hotel was as described and of the star rating you booked but you just didn't fancy that one ?
Surely that's the point of these top secret deals sometimes you'll get a small discount-othertimes a better one.
With most of these unnamed offers research will throw up the likely hotels-and if there's a likelyhood of getting a particular hotel you specifically don't want then it isn't the deal for you.
I don't use LM for these deals for that reason-I think their range is too diverse within a grade but instead I use Priceline (but research carefully using biddingfortravel &betterbidding) and have never been disappointed and have got fantastic value -90% of the time I can predict the hotel and have saved a lot of money (this year alone £100 a night for New York, £70 a night in Manchester for example) however I know I'm taking a risk and if there was a hotel I absolutely didn't want in the catagory I wouldn't book it-a deal is only a deal if it gives me what I want.

photome

withabix wrote: »

As far as the OP is concerned, you have a right to cancel your hotel booking with Lastminute.com in accordance with the Distance Selling regulations.

They are not allowed to charge you a fee for doing this.

I dont think distance selling regs apply to holidays/hotels, someone else may be able to confirm or deny

withabix

photome wrote: »

I dont think distance selling regs apply to holidays/hotels, someone else may be able to confirm or deny

Yup, my mistake - doesn't apply.

Tao81

dmg24 wrote: »

Thank you! Thank goodness somebody has some common sense on here! x

Whooooo.....That's a tad rude and discourteous?!!!!:eek: :mad: I wouldn't have thought of cutting and pasting a longish hotel description into google!!! and I pride myself on generally having plenty of common sense.... thank you very much!:p

....... Thanks for the warning Peter and Good Luck with your accommodation whilst away.

rubia1409_2

peterbaker wrote: »

. Further, the hotel that do not want to
disclose their identity to the customers before the order is processed
are categorised in a 'Top Secret Hotel'.

What bad English!

Happy_saver_4

rubia1409 wrote: »

What bad English!

Perhaps Peter Baker is really " Petrovitch der Bäcker " then possibly it would be a good attempt at written english :rotfl:

peterbaker

rubia1409 wrote: »

What bad English!

Yep it wasn't my bad English (this time!) - I was quoting verbatim from someone at lastminute.com with a foreign sounding name whom I protected for politically correct reasons by removing their monika - anyway it's bad form now in the UK to criticise bad English, isn't it? :rolleyes: - that's why I didn't in my OP!

Come on rubia, get with the programme, and you Happy

Voyager2002

Nelski wrote: »

the thing to do is to google the details they give for the hotel exactly and it usually throws up the identity as they use the hotels descriptions.

Sounds like a good idea, but when I tried this for a recent visit to Dublin, I could not identify ANY of the top secret hotels listed. Since location was important, and I could not get maps of the hotels' positions, I gave lastminute a miss.