Last February my wife and I made a booking to rent an apartment in Costa Teguise, Lanzarote, for 11 days during April. My wife is disabled with rheumatoid arthritis so it is important to us that we had a room with a walk in shower, not a shower over a bath, and we knew this apartment complex had a disabled friendly apartment. We made the booking online with Alpharooms, but it was not possible to specify the disabled rooms online, so after we made the booking I telephoned Alpharooms to tell them this. There was no problem with the rooms, but while I was talking to the customer support rep. he suggested that I book a transfer from the airport to the resort and back through them, as my wife cannot climb into buses and we therefore have to take taxis.

I agreed to this, but emphasised that we did not want a vehicle with a high sill, simply a large taxi which could take two passengers and luggage plus a folded wheelchair. This was emphasised by me again in several e mails as they simply did not seem to be getting the message, and kept insisting the transfer would be a minibus. For this transfer they deducted almost £70 from my credit card account. Finally I had an e mail from them claiming that the transfer vehicle was an adapted one and would be completely suitable.

On arriving at the airport, the transfer was a high sill minibus. The driver obviously was unaware that he was supposed to pick up a disabled passenger and the bus had no let down steps or ramp, so it would have been impossible for ANYONE disabled to have got into it. A representative of the transfer company was waiting for another passenger, and realised our problem, but she could speak little or no English, so she phoned a supervisor on her mobile and I spoke to him. He said that nothing could be done, we had to find a taxi of our own. I asked about a refund, he told me to sort that out with Alpharooms on return to the UK. The minibus left and we found the taxi rank and paid our own way in a taxi.

A couple of days later on checking my e mails, I found one from Alpharooms telling me that we had refused an alternative transfer ( completely false ) and so the return transfer to the airport had been cancelled. After several e mail exchanges, they reinstated the return transfer, only to go back on that and cancel it again. They wanted receipts from the taxi drivers and insisted that they would only repay the cost of our own transfers, which I argued was irrelevant, it was not Alpharooms business how much we paid another firm, or even their business how we travelled at all. I simply wanted back what we had paid to them, because they had failed to deliver what they had promised. The taxi fares came to less than what we had paid Alpharooms anyhow, so I would never pre book a taxi transfer again.

Every e mail from Alpharooms was from a different person and there seemed to be absolutely no joined up thinking on their part, no effort to really look into this, and no desire to put things right. I have gone to a helpline in a national newspaper which tries to sort out issues like this but so far I have had no reply. I am also considering a complaint to ABTA, would anyone know the e mail address or mailing address for this? Fortunately, being the kind of person who rarely gets around to emptying his inbox, I have every single e mail to back up my allegations. All I want is the money back we paid for this botched transfer, and not in the form of some voucher as I never intend to do business with Alpharooms again.