Holiday Complaints

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You are so very very brave. It makes me so cross to read your account of your so called holiday. You must feel so let down by everyone. It is hard to realise that this could happen in the year 2005.

People have been saying dont go away in the hurricane season. But on the other hand if holiday companies want to take your money and sell holidays during that time, they should have emergency back up plans in operation.

My heart goes out to you, it is bad enough going through that yourself, but to be put in a position to be unable to prevent your small children suffering must be unbearable. :cry:
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While I am sure it was a very harrowing experience for you, as described in your very long report, I have to say that your words at the very beginning of your account of what happened should have told you what you could expect i.e."we did chose to travel during the hurricane season" and what happened - a hurricane happened, well,well what a surprise! I have some friends who crowed about what a great cheap deal they got for their holiday in Mexico a couple of years ago, again in the hurricane season and you've guessed it, there was a hurricane. Their hotel got wrecked and their holiday was ruined. They also chose to go to Cuba recently, again in the hurricane season and guess what - it happened again!

The information given out on the TV about hurricanes can change, with talk of the hurricane possibly veering away and missing or hitting various places. Maybe the lack of information by the Thomson reps was because they were as much in the dark about it as you were. If you thought you were having a rough time, then what about the people who lived in the area, they've probably lost their homes, their jobs and even members of their family. You complained about being driven through very deep water - what did you expect - the place was flooded! I notice near the end of your report that you were prepared to stay on for another few days, to salvage what was left of the holiday so maybe you weren't as "traumatised" as you thought. I know that if I had been through what you described I'd want to get out of that country as fast as I could and would have taken the first flight out, even if I did only have fifteen minutes notice.

All I can say is, if you choose to holiday in a part of the world that experiences many hurricanes, then you have to expect that perhaps you will have chosen to go there just as another hurricane comes along. As for claiming compensation for all the many things you listed i.e phone calls, (some of which included interviews with TV stations), missed meals, excursions, prebooked plane seats, travellers cheques etc. etc. etc. what do the Terms and Conditions state in the Thomson brochure? I wonder if the insurance will cover any of the stuff you want compensating for - isn't a hurricane classed as an Act of God or something, probably something they don't pay out for. I had a look at your website and, if that report is also the length of the letter you sent to Thomsons then I wonder if they'd even bother to read it as a letter of complaint should be short and to the point with a longer follow-up report later. It will be interesting to hear how you get on.
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In all my time reading reviews on this site I have never and would hope never to have to read just a callous and unjust reply as I have from Spindle. I too beleive if you book a holiday in a hurrican season then you should know what to expect but to have just read - (maybe a very long report but one which is very informative and real that you just wouldn't want to ever be in this situation) I just can't beleive what society has come to. For goodness sake these people were put at risk - I could only imagine what it must have been like and hope I never have too.
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I agree with you. I hope Spindle never finds himself in a similar position. People dont deliberately put themselves in harms way. Sometimes bad things happen. You take a risk any time you travel. Look at the Tsunami last Xmas. Nobody could have predicted that but who is to say it wont happen again. Should we all stay at home?
We went to Mexico in July, aware that in theory we could get bad weather. We had done a bit of research and found there had not been a hurricane in the Yucatan peninsula in July since the 1860s. We took a chance it would be good weather and lost our holiday due to Hurricane Emily. We had 20 hours in our resort and then our hotel was wrecked. It took 4 very uncomfortable days before we got home and we got no compensation. In our opinion our TO treated us badly but we got over it.
I dont get why Spindle feels the need to come over as smug but that's obviously the sort of person he or she is. Sad.
Regards
Bridd
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:evil: perhaps spindle works for thompsons,or perhaps he should consider applying to be a rep,because the attitude seems comparable with the help recieved in mexico.i feel devastated for the family,and hope they receive maximum payout.thompsons charge massively over the odds for the holidays anyway,i would have expected better.best wishes mo :)
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i totally agree with spindle. compensation for phonecalls made?

why dont you publish your story on hardback and you might even get money for that too.

think yourslef lucky to be alive, it could have been MUCH worse!
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just realised that spindls is female,dont know why,but this shocks me even more. mo
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What callous people spindal and scotlad must be.

Tour operators are quite happy to sell holidays in hurricane season and at only slightly cheaper prices than at other times. If people weren't prepared to travel on these dates it would have an overall impact on holiday costs for others.

Tour operators should therefore be prepared to help paying customers under such circumstances. They should take people away from danger not into it!
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Well, I'm just STUNNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No matter WHAT happens, the TO has a 'duty of care'. Some people obviously have no compasion. I think this must be one of the requirements to work as a holiday rep or at the customer 'services' department!

I wonder if Scotlad or the rather nasty Spindles would be making these comments if one of you had died, which by your account could have been a very real possibility. It seems to me that you were put in danger by Thomsons, I just really am absolutely STUNNED!!!
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People dont deliberately put themselves in harms way.


Sorry but if you go to such an area during hurricane season then that is what you are doing

We went to Mexico in July, aware that in theory we could get bad weather


So you accepted that there was a risk however slight

Whilst we may have sympathy for anyone who is caught in this situation they must accept some responsibilty for having put themselves at risk. It may be that the TOs should not be selling holidays into such areas during the hurricane season but at the end of the day it is you that decides if you wish to go.

We are all entitled to our own point of view. Just because someone does not agree with you is no reason to insult them.

fwh
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no one here is deliberately insulting anyone - as you said we are all entitled to our points of view but when they cut to the bone with sarcasm when others are obviously telling it as it was others will respond - only my point of view
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I have just read Rogers story. It gives a very good feel for the situation and provides a vivid picture of their situation.

Clearly they have had a terrible ordeal, and regardless of whether or not it was the hurricane season I can only sypathise having been through a hurricane myself a year ago.

There are a lot of questions asked, for instance why they drove into the path of the hurricane and not away from it. I would like to know the answers, there may have been reason.

Mexico is a poor country although we normally only see the resort areas. The logistics of finding shelter would probably have been confused and Thompsons would have relied upon those logistics also. Another 4 star hotel may not have been a safer option, there may have been limited room available resulting in having to send people to different locations. This would have made evacuation more complicated.

I'm not sure that Thomsons did such a bad job on some fronts under the circumstances. We do not know what activity was taking place outside of Rogers direct experience. I feel there is a lot to this story which isn't known.

This was a terrible experience which noboddy deserves, hurrican season or not. I can't imagine how it was for the children. I have great sympathy for the family.
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luckily whenever I have had problems on holiday it hasn't taken much to solve them. I was disgusted to read this post. Maybe there was a slight bit of naivity in booking in a hurricane area in the hurricane season. BUT, Thomsons did have a duty of care. Surely they have contingency plans, or were they hoping the hurricane wouldn't happen? Funny how they started caring when it was back safely in the DR.

Seems that Spindles and Scotlad go on the perfect hols were nothing can possibly be go wrong. About time they awoke to the real world. Climates are changing and even hurricane areas are susceptible to freak conditions. What do they suggest we do? Ignore any area which can possibly be hit by the wrong sort of weather? What about the infrastructure of that area?

TOs would not offer holidays in those areas if no-one wanted them.

Why is it that TOs seem to have a couldn't care less attitude once they have your money. Wonder if they would be so b****y ignorant if we paid after?
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I went to Cuba this summer for the first time and took the calculated risk of going in the hurricane season because I wanted to be there for the annual Carnivale in Santiago da Cuba. If you want to go to Carnivale you have no choice but to accept that you might get caught in a hurricane or you don't go in the first place. As it happened my 3 week long trip fell quite neatly into the interval between Hurricanes Emily and Dennis tearing through the island. There were consequences for doing this - the infrastructure was badly affected and we couldn't do all the trips we had planned but we weren't involved in being evacuated to the shelters and though we experienced flight delays in both directions as a result of disruption to air traffic I'd been led to expect this with Cubana anyway.

But if something had happened then I don't think that I could have held the TO entirely responsible for anything that did. After all I would only have been there because I'd knowingly booked to go in the hurricane season in the first place and there were warning signs that this was going to be the worst season in some years from early summer. In fact if I'd been taking children with me I might have thought twice about it - it's one thing to take a calculated risk for myself as an adult, quite another to do it on behalf of a child. The standard and quality of most tourist resorts can so easily give the wrong impression about what conditions are like outside of the tourist enclaves and even Mexico doesn't really have the infrastructure to cope with a disaster like this, much less other countries in the region. As we now all know, even a country as big and affluent as the USA didn't when it came to the crunch.

I'm really sorry for all the people who had such traumatic experiences, especially those with children but perhaps it will serve as a wake-up call to the rest of us. Regions like the Caribbean are at risk of natural disasters on a scale far and away beyond what any of us in Europe can imagine and with far fewer resources to cope with the consequences of them. Travel to such regions isn't ever going to be 100% safe and none of us now have any excuse for thinking otherwise. TOs will provide holidays to wherever there is a market for them and we need to accept that as travellers we also have some responsibility towards our own safety too. Unless we are prepared to accept that sometimes these things happen we should confine ourselves to taking our holidays in those parts of the world that aren't subjected to such extremes of severe weather and to those countries where we can be confident that the authorities are up to the challenge of whatever natrual disasters might befall us there.

I thought that Spindles was making this point quite fairly and without obvious sarcasm. Scotlad made the same point in a, granted, more pithy way but we cannot shrug all responsibility off on to the TOs. We also have a duty of care for our own safety and that of our families. So, yes, Biiltrac, I am suggesting that if people aren't prepared to accept that travelling to an area that is susceptible to extremes of severe weather sometimes means that things can go wrong and we might suffer traumatic consequences that the local infrastructure and TOs can't cope with then they shouldn't go on holiday there. TOs have been taking a calculated risk over this for years but so have holidaymakers. Many people this year lost that gamble that others have successfully won in previous years. As with all gambling, if you can't take the hit if you lose then you shouldn't accept the gamble in the first place. No, I don't work for a TO and, yes, there are no doubt questions to be asked about how they managed the events of this summmer in the Caribbean but as tourists we cannot just slough off our own responsibilities. Some of us took the gamble and won - I had 3 wonderful weeks in Cuba - and others lost but we are the ones who placed the bets. The TOs don't force us take holidays in the hurrican season.

SM
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life is full of gambles sm - the point being made in the original post was that Thomson didn't give the correct information from the start. As said if this family had known they were going to be put into a shelter with little food or water they would have taken it upon themselves to be better prepared especially with having a young family. We need to get away from the comments that you take the risk when booking in Hurricane season and see it as a learning experience for all especially the T/O. Life is greater than any compensation and once people have got over this bad experience they will be very thankful for that.
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I echo Rogers sentiments .I was there with them the only differance was i was a day later leaving the so called shelter .But the bottom line in my opinion is Thomsons where a shambles. Stevie
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Well, it seems my message early on in the discussion certainly stirred up some strong feelings, a couple agreeing with me (thank you) but some appalled by my opinion. In spite of the fact that some people thought that what I said was "callous" unjust" and I even "stunned" someone, my opinion still stands that anyone who books a holiday to an area that is regularly prone to hurricanes over a known five or six month period shouldn't be surprised if they get caught up in one. If you look at a very similar thread a few messages down with Hurricane Wilma in the title, there are quite a few more who are of the same opinion as me.

I'm not denying that the people caught up in the hurricane had a terrible time, of course they did, but they still exposed themselves to risks by going to that place at a time when there had already been quite a few hurricanes and tropical storms. Just a simple search on the National Hurricane Centre's website shows just how many tropical storms, cyclones and hurricanes there have been during 2005. June - two, July - five, August - six. In September, the month before Wilma, there were six tropical cyclones, five hurricanes and one tropical depression! October itself had six tropical cyclones including four hurricanes and two tropical storms - just how much more information can anyone have and still book holidays in those months! If someone wants to go to, say, Switzerland to see the beautiful grass covered mountains with the pretty houses and cattle with bells round their necks, they don't choose the middle of winter when there's twenty feet of snow, equally if someone wants to lie on a scorching hot beach in the Costa del Sol they book their holiday for July or August not January or February.

I must just say that the long account given by the original poster was very detailed, in fact, so detailed that you would swear they had been keeping a diary, either that or they are very experienced in writing fact or fiction as some of the wording was very professional.

As a last note, presumably all those people who booked holidays with tour operators had read and agreed to the Terms and Conditions before they booked? If they did, they would, (in the case of Thomsons) have read the important note regarding Compensation and "Events beyond our control". Among the fairly long list which includes terrorist activity, industrial disputes and natural and nuclear disasters, there is also the mention of "hurricanes and other actual or potential severe weather conditions". Why, after the event, do they still think they are entitled to compensation?
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i think when booking holidays,the price is a big factor,and i know for myself and my husband having 4 kids and always havng to pay for 4 adults despite the fact that they are not.i have to pay £3000 for a couple of weeks in ibiza in school hols self catering.the point im trying to make is i have looked all inc at mexico in october and thought it was a good price,but didnt realize the consequences untill reading the first post.i to have to scrimp and save for my holidays,i think that i would have tried to stay on in the dom rep also to make the best of a bad job.not all people are saddos like me who enjoy reading the small print at the back of brochures in the bath on a saturday morning,but having done that, the word hurricane doesnt mean a lot untill it happens to you.i would hope that if i had been through a traumatic experince the forum would be a big help,but following some negative comments i would think twice about stating my case. :oops: you only have to look around the other forums and see some of the complaintse.g the balcony wasnt big enough,the spaniards didnt speak english well enough! and people are advising to ring ros the solicitor,well if ever a case deserved it this is it.its only my opinion :) mo
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With all due respect this posting is a trawl to find people who wish to join in a class action - Visit the website shown in the posting - http://WWW.HURRICANE-WILMA.CO.UK - That tells you what they are trying to do. HT is a site dedicated to helping people who want advice or information.I would be interested to know what the mods view is on HT being used for this purpose. I also wonder if as Spindles says has someone been keeping a diary - difficult I would think in the circumstances described. OR Has it been put together after the event with some expert help?

fwh
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