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Hi Islandgirl

Welcome to the club of miffed (and ex) customers of the MyTravel group of companies - Direct Hols/Airtours. They have been bumping off their customers at an unacceptable rate over the summer. I bet they have (or will) tell you that 'your accomodation overbooked the amount of rooms allocated to them, too many rooms were loaded onto their system and so Direct Travel sold the number of rooms that were available to them'. This seems to be their standard response to customers who have had booked a year in advance. How else can they justify their business practice which is not far short of an 'allocation on arrival' system.

Did you accept their offer of an alternative holiday or a refund?

I have heard a few cases of this happening, in the past few months alone. I find it very disturbing. I know a lot of people say "as long as get the equilivilant rated Hotel or apts...." That wouldnt be enough for me. We book our holiday well in advance, having studied many Brochures, apts, etc to your liking. You pick where you are going, after a lot of searching. I, for one, would be GUTTED if this happened to me. Im going to Cyprus next year, and just pray it doesnt......... I feel so sorry for you and your family.

I wouldn't be happy with that. Especially as people spend a lot of time, pouring over brochures for the best prices, hotels that suit their needs, in location wise and ammenities. then i have no doubt they then visit web-sites for information on their chosen hotel.

People then book and pay, a deposit and save up their hard earned cash all year. Only to be told just before departure (and some on arrival ) that their accommodation has been changed.

Some people may drop on lucky and get a better hotel than they had chosen. But this does not apply to all holiday makers. i can imagine the sickley feeling you must get in your stomach when the letter drops on your mat or they phone you withe the news.

This happened to a friend of mine who had booked with My Travel. She was lucky as she was offered a 4* hotel instead of the 3* she had booked. She had actually looked at the 4* but it was to expensive. But she told me of the awful feeling that she had when the phone call came.

Surely it is about time that tour operators were not allowed to get away with this.

I sympathise with you - we booked a villa in Florida with Direct holidays & when we got there we were allocated a place pretty much substandard to what we had booked.

We stayed the first night because we were basically knackered but then camped out at their office until they agreed to move us to a Villa comparable to what we had booked. This took aboout 4 hours to arrange once they realised we wouldn't be fobbed off.

Eventually our perseverence paid off but it meant us losing out on our first 24 hours holiday by the time we uprouted and travelled 30 miles across Florida.

Vowed then I would never book a holiday with Airtours/My Travel or any subsiduaries. Wish they would do us all a favour and go bust.

Can they wait until i've taken them to court before they go bust please though!!

Lisa,x

I had to cancel my holiday with Direct Holidays due to changes they made to my holiday that wouldn't suit my disabled son. I was lucky in that Trading Standards took up my case and I was given a full refund.

They are an absolute dire company to deal with and I think they give their customer relations department training in how to be awkward, unhelpful and sullen. I would never use them again after my experience.

We actually got offered flights to Cyprus for £100 each with My Travel. The next cheapest was £170 with Thomas Cook.
We took the Thomas Cook flights, I would need My Travel to pay ME to travel with them, they are a disgrace.

Hi All

what i am finding it hard to understand with this overbooking is that the people who have been bumped have often booked well in advance of a year. Direct Holidays were not overbooked at that early stage.

So the dates on the invoice must proved who was booked correctly! and who was overbooked. If the holiday company are bumping the earlier booking because it earns them less money than the later one. Where is their "Duty of Care" are they not bound by this.

Would it make any difference if the holiday was paid in full when booked not just a deposit, would they then not have entered into a full and binding contract to give you what you paid for.

There has got to be some way to stop them doing this.

Wendy

If it was just a case of overbooking it would be simple for them to remedy you would think by loading their computer system with the correct allocation of hotel rooms and that would make it impossible for them to oversell - easypeesy!!

Its well known that Mytravel have had financial difficulties for a couple of years now and earlier on this year they undertook a major restructing programme. As a consequence, they significantly reduced their capacity -as reported at their AGM in the Spring. And its my belief that's why customers have been bumped this summer and not overbooking by hoteliers. Had we all known it was their intention to 'downsize', how many of us would have been tempted by their cheap quotes when we booked 12 months ago.

But then again customers can hardly expect to be kept informed when they mislead their own shareholders. They were fined 240k by the Financial Services Authority for failing to come clean over a 24.3 million charge that contributed to huge losses in 2002. MyTravel refused to admit any guilt, but decided to pay the fine rather than appeal. They cut their losses to safeguard their financial future.

Lets hope they think it worth the risk because I doubt none of us will ever be tempted to book a holiday with them again.

after a lot of reasearching and reading reviews last year I decided to go to La penita apartments in pdc in lanzarote. The cheapest price was with direct holidays. I booked and was counting down the days, then three days before we were due out there they called me up and said the La Penita was full and gave me two alternative accomodations to choose from. I was gutted !!! The other accomodations were crap after much debating and me having a nervous breakdown I was just about to call them back and demand a refund when I got a call off them saying oh sorry we have made a mistake you still have a room in the original property!!!! No apology or nothing!! Get it sorted Direct its peoples lives your messing with !!!
I also think they charge ridiculous prices too!!
rant over now

Hello.

Endless of complaints exist on this site, you should read Airtours complaints. A lot of unhappy Direct Holidays customers.

I booked my wedding holiday to mexico on the back of their wedding package they sold me. Weeks later i discovered that this wedding package did not exist. I stupidly only cancelled the wedding package (even though it did not exist the wedding dept assumed I was taking their wedding package which was not the one I was sold to from a direct holidays employer) I then booked direct with the wedding co-ordinator at the hotel.

The wedding co-ordinator requested that I get written conformation that we have a reservation at the Toucan as DH have constantly over booked their room allocation. You see in my opinion they knowingly over book and then encourage customers to go to another hotel which obviously the tour op have got a better deal. They could purchase more rooms at the hotel but it costs to much money and that is why customers are bumped.

Anyway DH have refused to comment or guarantee our reservation. It took them 8 weeks to reply to my letter, they only did this when I asked a supervisor at MyTravel to ask them to contact me. I have now been waiting since 13 of August for a reply to my second letter. My wedding has been cancelled, we felt we were left with no choice. I am so angry that DH have refused to return our deposit. I will never use this company again and urge all customers to contact Granada TV and tell your story.

I have booked a holiday with Direct for September 2006 to Ibiza. I was pleased with the price (although currently it is even cheaper on the Direct website - that's life!).

However, after reading these postings where Direct change holidays at very short notice even those that have been booked well in advance, I'm getting worried that what appears to be a good deal may turn out to be a non-existent holiday!

I'll keep you posted! (Probably in early September 2006!)

Hi iloveholidays,
may I ask which hotel you are going to and which resort?
Lisa,x

When is this appalling behaviour by this company going to stop?? More and more new members of this site have awful stories to tell. Thank goodness for websites like these.
My heart goes out to all of you that have had your holidays ruined.

Hello Lisa,

Hopefully, we'll be stopping at the Hotel Riomar in Santa Eulalia next September.

aah, not one i've been to, sorry, but Ibiza is a lovely Island (my favorite, shame we needed to rent out our holiday home, or Ibiza would have been where I'd have bought!!)`
I hope it all works out for you and I hope that people stop booking with Direct Holidays/My travel. It's really NOT worth the savings that we get when booking with them to be messed around so much.
When we were told thet we had to get off the plane at Gatwick and no other arrangements had been made to get us back to Blackburn, I sat in Gatwick airport and cried. I felt extremely silly, but the frustration of the nightmare flight to Jamaica, then the terrible holiday, then to do that to us on the way back.......it's a good job that there wasn't a Rep from My Travel there really because people wanted to lynch someone. I'll NEVER chance that again to save a few quid.Lisa,x

i am shocked at the way direct holidays have treated their customers judging by your replies. In our case we had carefully chosen our holiday resort as we have four kids age ranging from seventeen to four. So we booked the club migjorn apartments , playa den bossa , as we knew it would keep everyone happy with what the resort and apartments had to offer. We actually had to phone their office on two occasions when we were concerned when our tickets had not arrived five days before departure. Then we were told , very flippantly, resort and apartments changed, accept that or refund. Well, how can you tell the children at that late stage that the holiday is cancelled that they have been looking forward too for a year? So we accepted the change to santa eulalia, which was lovely, if it had just been myself and partner, but was DEAD for kids. So was not a happy or relaxed holiday at all as the older children were always bored when everything closes at 11.30. It was Not the holiday we chose, and what made it worse there was a family at our apertments to what had happended exactly the same but as is office was right next to direct in glasgow he kicked up a fuss. And apparently Direct had cancelled? their contract with the Club Migjorn on May 11th and we still had not been told July. To me it feels like being held to ransom. Being told at that late date , what choice does a family have? If I could reverse what has happened I would accept a full refund if Direct Holidays does this to you as they dont deserve your money when you dont get the holiday you have booked ,saved hard for , and looked forward too for a year.

well said Islandgirl. Did you write a letter of complaint to Direct Holidays?
Do send your story off to granada. If we get enough people writing to complain about DH and their sister companies they will investigate I am sure of it.

I hope your next holiday is a lot better