They don't want to know unless it's good
As I’m fed up of the posts, they’re amazing, so knowledgeable, very helpful blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc. Well not this story …. And before people say why didn’t you contact them direct … we did! Including writing a letter of complaint (email and formal paper copy) as they told us to … which was a waste of time as they didn’t even acknowledge it .. until we rang them and asked have you received it!
To start the story … we had seen a holiday advertised on their book of faces page for a cruise earlier this year..
We went and enquired… We talked to the “great bunch of honest, knowledgeable and experienced staff who want to be your first-choice travel agent for all your future travel requirements!” Quoted on their book of faces!
Day 1 - We sat down at a desk, we mentioned to experienced, knowledgeable staff about how we had done a cruise before and how they were very good at accommodating me with gluten free food as I was Coeliac.
Coeliac was mentioned quite a bit during our conversation! However, the staff member did struggle to get on the system but we had lots of faith in them !
We were very happy at that point and went to the pub to talk it over!
Day 2 I went to book the cruise.
The same experienced staff member was in, I mentioned it had to have coeliac on the booking.
How do you spell that ? and wrote it down on a scrap of paper!
The experienced staff member couldn’t get on the system and had to phone a friend.
During the booking of the holiday, we again talked about being gluten free.
During the booking at no point did the experienced staff advise me that the cruise would not be able to accommodate my dietary requirements. ( very important for me to eat! ) Would not have booked if we had known this!
Nothing about Coeliac was on the holiday confirmation forms.
“Do not worry we will add these later!” Why would we worry they were after all the experienced, knowledgeable people and I trusted them!
Few weeks later .. The final bill was paid but Coeliac was still not on the booking. We were told I had to fill in a special dietary form and email it direct back to the cruise company. The cruise company emailed a reply 1 hour later …..
The cruise company said for this cruise ship…. “ We do not have Gluten Free Meals, guests may only find a limited selection of pre-packaged gluten-free snacks, including biscuits, croissants, sponge cakes, and muffins. There is no cooked food available in the buffet or main dining area for guests with dietary intolerances to gluten”
PANIC!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!! WHATTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!
So they would feed me packets of biscuits etc for a week! If we had known this we would not have booked !!
We did look ourselves at alternate cruises prior to cancelling but nothing suitable came up, the holiday was cancelled the final amount paid was returned but the deposit of £750 was not returned.
They told us that we never mentioned coeliac when booking and made us out to be liars and that the conversations never happened.
Over the course of the next 5 months….
We never got a response to our formal email / letter of complaint to the travel agency so we had to get the credit card company involved
… they reviewed our evidence under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and refunded the deposit.
So local people please be very careful when booking as they are not wonderful and helpful unless everything goes their way!!!
And always pay on your credit card for extra security as without them … we may have never got our money back!