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Olympic holidays - is this letter too harsh?
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RichyRich
Posts: 2,091 Forumite
What do you think? I should go for it?
Olympic Holidays
c/o Interaction Worldwide Ltd
1 Torrington Park
North Finchley
London
N12 9SU
Dear Sir or Madam
My partner and I have just returned from an Olympic holiday at the Alefki Apartments in Kavos, Corfu. On the outbound flight, we were informed that the pilot was unable to land at Corfu airport due to heavy cloud cover, and so instead we would have to take a detour to an airport in southern Italy to refuel. Whilst I admit that I am no aviation expert, I was under the impression that fuel stocks are depleted by running the engine of the plane rather than by the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere.
After approximately three hours in Italy without leaving the plane – during which time neither the cabin crew nor the pilot made any attempt to explain how long we would be waiting or what was happening, but did very generously offer all passengers a small glass of tap water – we returned to make a second attempt at landing in Corfu.
Once again I confess my ignorance in such matters, but the cloud cover seemed much denser on our return than on the first occasion, yet somehow our heroic pilot managed to land the plane and allow us to start our holiday.
I am sure that you will be delighted to hear that we experienced no problems whatsoever passing customs or collecting our luggage from the carousel. I can only assume that this was because Olympic allow competent bodies to carry out such important tasks such as checking passports and handling baggage so that they don’t balls that up as much as they do everything else.
After collecting our luggage, we made our way to our coach. The transfer representative, Daniel, looked rather tired, which is unsurprising given that he had been waiting three hours longer than he was expecting for us to arrive. However, I do not believe that it projected a very professional image of your company for him to fall asleep ten minutes into the journey and Manuel, the comedian coach driver, beeping his horn to wake him and every other passenger on board up at each drop off point. I am positive that you will appreciate that everyone found this absolutely hilarious and can understand why I was not in the slightest annoyed each and every consecutive time it happened. At the start of the journey, Dan informed us that we would arrive in Kavos within an hour and a half. Two and a half hours later we arrived at our apartment.
When the time came for us to attend our welcome meeting I am confident that you will understand that I was not as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I would have been had I not have spend several uncomfortable sleepless hours on various forms of mass transport. Leanne, our resort representative, however, did not understand this. She accused my partner and I of being ‘boring’ for not wanting to participate in the €20 bar crawl – an activity that I could organise myself for the grand total of naff all and have kept the €20 to spend on drinks, despite explaining to her that we were there for a fortnight and that we might do it the week after. She humiliated us in front of the other holidaymakers, suggesting that doing the crawl in the second week would undermine the ‘whole point’ of the activity.
At the welcome meeting, Lea also advised us of the procedure for obtaining departure details. I would be interested to know whether it is company policy to require guests to fill in the customer questionnaire before telling them when and where to board their coach. If so, I beg the question whether you would deny someone their journey home simply for refusing to spend some of their own holiday, which they have paid for, filling in a survey. If it is not your policy I would request, by virtue of the Data Protection Act 1998, to have my responses removed from your database and any marketing information you have collected or processed about myself or my partner deleted. I do not wish to be contacted by yourselves for marketing purposes and nor do I wish or my personal data to be given, sold, rented or passed to any third parties except where required by law. I would like to reiterate that if filling out the survey is not a stipulation of receiving our departure details as we were informed, then the information has been collected under false pretences and that you as a company are in breach of the law.
As it happens, a few days afterwards we decided that we would like to take an excursion and visited the Travelworld SA office to find Leanne to book a trip to Aqua Land. Unfortunately, Lea was nowhere to be found but fortunately a local shop was selling Aqua Land trips and, as an added bonus, they were cheaper. As opposed to the €35 Leanne was asking for, we only paid €27 each. Imagine my surprise when we boarded the coach, closely followed by a Liverpudlian Olympic representative, who was leading the party. I was wondering if you would care to explain why the exact same trip, organised by Olympic, cost €8 less per person when booked via a third party? Logic would dictate that our agent would charge us more so that they could take their “slice”, or did we have such a benevolent vendor that didn’t mind standing a loss in the name of good value? More likely, although I’m still not convinced, are your profit margins so high that you can afford to see excess places to resellers at a loss?
We were also informed by Leanne, at the welcome meeting, that we would have to vacate our room at 12 noon, however for the reasonable sum of €15 we could keep the room up until 6pm. Instead of doing this, we rented a room privately elsewhere for €20, as this would provide us with lodgings until 12 midnight, leaving us only half an hour to stand outside in the cold with our luggage as opposed to the six and a half that we’d have to if we had kept our own room. However, the night before departure, after we had already booked and paid for our alternative arrangements, the hotel manager came to visit us and informed us that for the pre-specified sum of €15 we could in fact keep the room up until midnight. Had our representative not misinformed us, we would obviously have saved ourselves €5 and the hassle of moving all of our luggage to our new room.
We were disappointed to discover that, on the days that out maid decided to visit our hotel room, she thought it adequate merely to turn our bed linen over. I only wish that I had thought of that! Of course, only one side of a sheet is used at once so why not dirty both sides of it before cleaning it? I could have saved myself a small fortune in washing powder, electricity and metered water over the years if only such an ingenious money saving solution had occurred to me earlier! In fact, our sheets were changed only once during our two-week stay.
Our maid did not restrict herself to a cursory sweep and a flip of the bottom sheet on the bed. She also took it upon herself to switch off the fan, which we had paid €15 for full use of over the fortnight. We specifically kept the fan on during the day while we were out to keep the room cool for our return and had, in my opinion, paid for that right. The maid obviously did not see it that way because every time we came back not only was the fan switched off but also unplugged.
Another quirk of the maid was slightly more disturbing. I believe that she may have an aversion to lavatory paper. When we arrived, there was about half a roll. Not a problem, we thought, if the maid comes daily it will be replaced before it runs out. Of course, she didn’t come every day and never replaced the toilet paper, meaning we had to buy our own.
Not only did we have problems with the lavatory paper, but also the lavatory. Without going into too much detail, I am sure that you can appreciate that spending my Saturday afternoon filling the cistern using the showerhead in order to empty the contents of the lavatory bowl is not my idea of the ideal holiday! We reported this in Leanne’s book at the Travelworld SA office and it was fixed on Monday – two weeks later. As well as fixing the lavatory, I was dismayed to note that the maintenance technician also took it upon himself to switch off and unplug our fan.
Finally, I do not believe that our 14-night holiday was indeed 14 nights. We set off from Manchester Airport on Saturday September 9th, but ‘overnight’ was spent in an airport, on a plane, in another airport and on a coach. I am sure that this does not constitute a ‘night’. So, let’s count: 1 (Sunday); 2 (Monday); 3 (Tuesday); 4 (Wednesday); 5 (Thursday); 6 (Friday); 7 (Saturday); 8 (Sunday); 9 (Monday) 10 (Tuesday); 11 (Wednesday); 12 (Thursday) 13 (Friday). As we were evicted at midday on Saturday and the coach picked us up at midnight, I also do not believe this should count as a ‘night’.
I have calculated the amount of compensation I think that my partner and I should receive and have detailed the calculation below. I am sure that you will agree that this is very reasonable.
The deduction of five and a half hours from the expected duration of our holiday: £8.15
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected hours (336) multiplied by the number of hours deducted (5.5) to give the cost of five and a half hours at resort.
The deduction of one night from the expected duration of our holiday: £35.57.
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected nights (14) to give the cost of one nights’ stay.
The misinformation resulting in an overspend to obtain dwellings: €5
Calculated as the cost of obtaining accommodation elsewhere (€20) minus the cost of what it would have cost staying where we were (€15) to give the excess cost.
The misinformation resulting in having to move contents of apartment to new apartment and back again to coach: £0.74
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected hours (336) divided by the estimated time [in hours] taken moving the bags unnecessarily (0.5).
The implied cost to us of having use of the fan for less time than was paid for: €5
Calculated as the cost of fan rental (€15) minus the estimated time it was switched off contrary to our wishes (one third of our stay) to give the amount of value we did not receive.
The cost of toilet paper we had to replace ourselves: €4
Calculated as the cost of a 4-pack of “Izal-but-a-bit-thinner” toilet paper that we had to purchase. In actual fact, we bought two 4-packs, but as we only used one I believe it is unfair to charge you for it.
Time spent filling the cistern: £0.74
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected hours (336) divided by the estimated time [in hours] taken filling the lavatory cistern with water from the showerhead (0.5).
All prices in Euros will attract an exchange rate of 1.4, as charged on our Monarch Airlines flight back to Manchester.
Total = £55.20
As a gesture of goodwill, I am willing to waive the €14 we saved between us on the trip to Aqua Land by booking with somebody else. This price will attract an exchange rate of 2.0 = £7.00.
Total payable = £48.20
I am confident that you will agree that this calculation is fair and accurate. You will note that I have not charged for my labour costs (many plumbers charge upwards of £90 per hour and porters in hotels are paid to carry luggage, often at £6 an hour or above) or administration costs in writing this letter.
I hope to hear from you soon
Yours sincerely
etc.
Olympic Holidays
c/o Interaction Worldwide Ltd
1 Torrington Park
North Finchley
London
N12 9SU
Dear Sir or Madam
My partner and I have just returned from an Olympic holiday at the Alefki Apartments in Kavos, Corfu. On the outbound flight, we were informed that the pilot was unable to land at Corfu airport due to heavy cloud cover, and so instead we would have to take a detour to an airport in southern Italy to refuel. Whilst I admit that I am no aviation expert, I was under the impression that fuel stocks are depleted by running the engine of the plane rather than by the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere.
After approximately three hours in Italy without leaving the plane – during which time neither the cabin crew nor the pilot made any attempt to explain how long we would be waiting or what was happening, but did very generously offer all passengers a small glass of tap water – we returned to make a second attempt at landing in Corfu.
Once again I confess my ignorance in such matters, but the cloud cover seemed much denser on our return than on the first occasion, yet somehow our heroic pilot managed to land the plane and allow us to start our holiday.
I am sure that you will be delighted to hear that we experienced no problems whatsoever passing customs or collecting our luggage from the carousel. I can only assume that this was because Olympic allow competent bodies to carry out such important tasks such as checking passports and handling baggage so that they don’t balls that up as much as they do everything else.
After collecting our luggage, we made our way to our coach. The transfer representative, Daniel, looked rather tired, which is unsurprising given that he had been waiting three hours longer than he was expecting for us to arrive. However, I do not believe that it projected a very professional image of your company for him to fall asleep ten minutes into the journey and Manuel, the comedian coach driver, beeping his horn to wake him and every other passenger on board up at each drop off point. I am positive that you will appreciate that everyone found this absolutely hilarious and can understand why I was not in the slightest annoyed each and every consecutive time it happened. At the start of the journey, Dan informed us that we would arrive in Kavos within an hour and a half. Two and a half hours later we arrived at our apartment.
When the time came for us to attend our welcome meeting I am confident that you will understand that I was not as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I would have been had I not have spend several uncomfortable sleepless hours on various forms of mass transport. Leanne, our resort representative, however, did not understand this. She accused my partner and I of being ‘boring’ for not wanting to participate in the €20 bar crawl – an activity that I could organise myself for the grand total of naff all and have kept the €20 to spend on drinks, despite explaining to her that we were there for a fortnight and that we might do it the week after. She humiliated us in front of the other holidaymakers, suggesting that doing the crawl in the second week would undermine the ‘whole point’ of the activity.
At the welcome meeting, Lea also advised us of the procedure for obtaining departure details. I would be interested to know whether it is company policy to require guests to fill in the customer questionnaire before telling them when and where to board their coach. If so, I beg the question whether you would deny someone their journey home simply for refusing to spend some of their own holiday, which they have paid for, filling in a survey. If it is not your policy I would request, by virtue of the Data Protection Act 1998, to have my responses removed from your database and any marketing information you have collected or processed about myself or my partner deleted. I do not wish to be contacted by yourselves for marketing purposes and nor do I wish or my personal data to be given, sold, rented or passed to any third parties except where required by law. I would like to reiterate that if filling out the survey is not a stipulation of receiving our departure details as we were informed, then the information has been collected under false pretences and that you as a company are in breach of the law.
As it happens, a few days afterwards we decided that we would like to take an excursion and visited the Travelworld SA office to find Leanne to book a trip to Aqua Land. Unfortunately, Lea was nowhere to be found but fortunately a local shop was selling Aqua Land trips and, as an added bonus, they were cheaper. As opposed to the €35 Leanne was asking for, we only paid €27 each. Imagine my surprise when we boarded the coach, closely followed by a Liverpudlian Olympic representative, who was leading the party. I was wondering if you would care to explain why the exact same trip, organised by Olympic, cost €8 less per person when booked via a third party? Logic would dictate that our agent would charge us more so that they could take their “slice”, or did we have such a benevolent vendor that didn’t mind standing a loss in the name of good value? More likely, although I’m still not convinced, are your profit margins so high that you can afford to see excess places to resellers at a loss?
We were also informed by Leanne, at the welcome meeting, that we would have to vacate our room at 12 noon, however for the reasonable sum of €15 we could keep the room up until 6pm. Instead of doing this, we rented a room privately elsewhere for €20, as this would provide us with lodgings until 12 midnight, leaving us only half an hour to stand outside in the cold with our luggage as opposed to the six and a half that we’d have to if we had kept our own room. However, the night before departure, after we had already booked and paid for our alternative arrangements, the hotel manager came to visit us and informed us that for the pre-specified sum of €15 we could in fact keep the room up until midnight. Had our representative not misinformed us, we would obviously have saved ourselves €5 and the hassle of moving all of our luggage to our new room.
We were disappointed to discover that, on the days that out maid decided to visit our hotel room, she thought it adequate merely to turn our bed linen over. I only wish that I had thought of that! Of course, only one side of a sheet is used at once so why not dirty both sides of it before cleaning it? I could have saved myself a small fortune in washing powder, electricity and metered water over the years if only such an ingenious money saving solution had occurred to me earlier! In fact, our sheets were changed only once during our two-week stay.
Our maid did not restrict herself to a cursory sweep and a flip of the bottom sheet on the bed. She also took it upon herself to switch off the fan, which we had paid €15 for full use of over the fortnight. We specifically kept the fan on during the day while we were out to keep the room cool for our return and had, in my opinion, paid for that right. The maid obviously did not see it that way because every time we came back not only was the fan switched off but also unplugged.
Another quirk of the maid was slightly more disturbing. I believe that she may have an aversion to lavatory paper. When we arrived, there was about half a roll. Not a problem, we thought, if the maid comes daily it will be replaced before it runs out. Of course, she didn’t come every day and never replaced the toilet paper, meaning we had to buy our own.
Not only did we have problems with the lavatory paper, but also the lavatory. Without going into too much detail, I am sure that you can appreciate that spending my Saturday afternoon filling the cistern using the showerhead in order to empty the contents of the lavatory bowl is not my idea of the ideal holiday! We reported this in Leanne’s book at the Travelworld SA office and it was fixed on Monday – two weeks later. As well as fixing the lavatory, I was dismayed to note that the maintenance technician also took it upon himself to switch off and unplug our fan.
Finally, I do not believe that our 14-night holiday was indeed 14 nights. We set off from Manchester Airport on Saturday September 9th, but ‘overnight’ was spent in an airport, on a plane, in another airport and on a coach. I am sure that this does not constitute a ‘night’. So, let’s count: 1 (Sunday); 2 (Monday); 3 (Tuesday); 4 (Wednesday); 5 (Thursday); 6 (Friday); 7 (Saturday); 8 (Sunday); 9 (Monday) 10 (Tuesday); 11 (Wednesday); 12 (Thursday) 13 (Friday). As we were evicted at midday on Saturday and the coach picked us up at midnight, I also do not believe this should count as a ‘night’.
I have calculated the amount of compensation I think that my partner and I should receive and have detailed the calculation below. I am sure that you will agree that this is very reasonable.
The deduction of five and a half hours from the expected duration of our holiday: £8.15
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected hours (336) multiplied by the number of hours deducted (5.5) to give the cost of five and a half hours at resort.
The deduction of one night from the expected duration of our holiday: £35.57.
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected nights (14) to give the cost of one nights’ stay.
The misinformation resulting in an overspend to obtain dwellings: €5
Calculated as the cost of obtaining accommodation elsewhere (€20) minus the cost of what it would have cost staying where we were (€15) to give the excess cost.
The misinformation resulting in having to move contents of apartment to new apartment and back again to coach: £0.74
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected hours (336) divided by the estimated time [in hours] taken moving the bags unnecessarily (0.5).
The implied cost to us of having use of the fan for less time than was paid for: €5
Calculated as the cost of fan rental (€15) minus the estimated time it was switched off contrary to our wishes (one third of our stay) to give the amount of value we did not receive.
The cost of toilet paper we had to replace ourselves: €4
Calculated as the cost of a 4-pack of “Izal-but-a-bit-thinner” toilet paper that we had to purchase. In actual fact, we bought two 4-packs, but as we only used one I believe it is unfair to charge you for it.
Time spent filling the cistern: £0.74
Calculated as the cost of the holiday (£498) divided by the number of expected hours (336) divided by the estimated time [in hours] taken filling the lavatory cistern with water from the showerhead (0.5).
All prices in Euros will attract an exchange rate of 1.4, as charged on our Monarch Airlines flight back to Manchester.
Total = £55.20
As a gesture of goodwill, I am willing to waive the €14 we saved between us on the trip to Aqua Land by booking with somebody else. This price will attract an exchange rate of 2.0 = £7.00.
Total payable = £48.20
I am confident that you will agree that this calculation is fair and accurate. You will note that I have not charged for my labour costs (many plumbers charge upwards of £90 per hour and porters in hotels are paid to carry luggage, often at £6 an hour or above) or administration costs in writing this letter.
I hope to hear from you soon
Yours sincerely
etc.
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0
Comments
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Go for it.
How was your holiday, by the way? ;o)0 -
I'd remove the bit about passport control and ballsing up as it's agressive in tone and will not amuse them. The rest is mildly amusing and they might pay up.
I do think with regard to loo rolls they will say you should have rung reception. Also with regard to unpluging fan - I think they will quote H&S.
Also the letter jumps abit from in it's time line. Try to put it in chronological order so that it flows with errors/mishaps from day1 through to day 14. Focus on misinformation and bullying tactics in selling overpriced trips. It would be better to bring in straight after the bar crawl humiliation why you were glad you didn't book and overpriced trip to aqua land etc. Finally I would close with the DP bit about filling in the customer questionaire.
Good luck.
~Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.~:)
0 -
needs to be more concise but hey go for it. The recipient will also fall asleep if you dont cut it back. Sounds like a fab holiday can i have the details please. Just kidding. Complain by all means0
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Go for it - I agree with the passport bit, and making it a bit more concise though - saying that, its entertained me no end!
I take it you wouldn't recommend them?!
Sue0 -
I agree that you have every right to complain and expect some kind of compensation. My advice is:
- Cut it down to one A4 page and keep it simple.
- Be concise and forget the sarcastic comments and anything beyond their control.
- Forget the extra night - the room was waiting for you on arrival and this is standard international hotel practice.
- Cut out entirely the breakdown of costs for your compensation - it gives them a tool to argue - simply state you are out of pocket and extrememly disappointed and want compensation in the sum of £xxx.
Good luck0 -
You first refer to your resort rep as 'Leanne' then later call her 'Lea'. This implies a friendly rapport was established. This may suggest to any reader that the 'boring' accusation was part of jovial banter and not meant to offend. I'd stick to calling her Leanne or 'Your' rep in the letter.Light blue touchpaper and stand well back !0
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The bit with the fan is ridiculous. They are right to turn off (and unplug) an electrical item that is left on.
And your argument for wanting it left on is in basic denial of the laws of physics. The fan won't actually lower the temperature of the room if left on. It is after all just moving air around, not reducing its temperature. You will get exactly the same effect from the fan whether it had been on all the time, or whether you just turned it on when you entered the room.0 -
Your letter is way too long, need to get it on one side of an A4. You need to cut out all your sarkyness and just state the facts.
The fan as others say was turned off for H&S would you prefer to return to a charred bedroom/hotel? Forget about it.
Your plane landed at Brindesi or Bari presumably? because they are the closest. Whilst waiting there, your pilot would have been getting updates on weather at Corfu, The cloud cover may have appeared the same from above, but it is the level above ground of the cloud that is important, in other words the clouds may have lifted enough from the ground so your pilot could land. Would you prefer your plane to have continued circling and eventually run out of fuel? Forget about it.
It could be that they "risked it" because they didn't want to pay for all of you to be accomodated in Bari, but I doubt it, because the airport would not give permission to land if there was too much cloud at ground level.
Yes you should have been kept informed on the plane, and yes they should have given you all a sandwich and a can of lemonade.
You have a few good points.
Leanne pressuring you to go on a bar crawl
toilet roll, you shouldn't have to ask , but why didn't you?
Toilet not working.
The kick out time on the last day is just really shoddy and you should expect to have a hotel room for your duration, not like what happened here.
Just tell them clearly and without sarkyness why you're not happy and say all you require is what you consider to be a reasonable sum of 50 quid good will payment.0 -
Surely you were aware about flight times before you went too... it commonly occurs that one of your 14 (or 7) nights is one travelling.
It is also common that you provide your own toilet roll in Greece, the accomodation is very basic.
It's common to have to vacate your room early on the last day, even if you aren't leaving til 3am!
I do sympathise however, we went with Olympic to Faliraki. Our hotel, which was meant to be a short walk to the resort was 30 mins away by walking down a dual carriagway with no pavement. There were used condoms on one of our balconies, a pack of sausages that had been left in hot weather inside a wardrobe that secreted juices all over the floor, pans with dried up food in the bottom, a door frame fell off leaving my two friends trapped in their room, etc etc, the list does go on. We complained and were patronised by the rep. We then complained and were patronised by the area rep. We wrote a letter to head office which they said they never received. I then sent one by recorded delivery and we also complained I think to ABTA or ATOL, but nothing came of it
Send your letter by recorded delivery, I really hope you get some success!0 -
It may be common but does that make it acceptable? and should the brochure not tell the customers to expect these things?lilrowan wrote:It is also common that you provide your own toilet roll in Greece, the accomodation is very basic.
It's common to have to vacate your room early on the last day, even if you aren't leaving til 3am!0
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