Holiday Gems have little regard for the experience of their customers. You pay the price for getting such a good deal in as much as they have little or no customer service, should you experience a problem or want to complain. My pre holiday experience was fine, the price was good and they did everything they said they would.
My holiday however was far from great, my hotel was infested with cockroaches and I had no choice but to move hotels part way through my holiday. On my return I emailed holiday gems asking for help and support in getting some compensation. That was on the 5th Sept, I have still not received a reply, despite a follow up email. I will keep you posted on when and if I hear from them.
I think that for not a lot of money, holiday gems could really sharpen up its act and make a killing. As it stands I suspect a significant proportion of its customers would not give the company any repeat business, which makes me nervous for its sustainability in the long term.

You will not get a reply from holiday gems,unless a member of there staff read this post!in which case they will prove me wrong!.
I will not book with this company ever agin and so if all the other people that have had a bad customer service will also do this then yes this company is going where the dinosaurs went....extinction,and it will happen as they do not reply EVER to any emails.
I would say to anyone that goes to the trouble of reading these reviews please go somewhere else,we are planning are next holiday and it will be either direct with the hotel and flight operator or with the likes of holiday hypermarket,ie someone i can have eye contact with and shout loudly to if i'm not happy in there huge shop!,no-one likes the sound of an un-happy customer when they are trying to sell holidays to other potential customers do they!.

I emailed holiday gems asking for help and support in getting some compensation. That was on the 5th Sept, I have still not received a reply, despite a follow up email. I will keep you posted on when and if I hear from them.

If you require some advice/assistance with this then you would be better posting in our Complaints forum.

The first advice our members will give you is forget the emails. They simply waste your time. Companies receive 1000s of them and you are relying on someone to pick yours out of all the rest. It could even be that it does not get through due to spam/anti virus filters and such.
The method we always advise is complain in writing sent recorded delivery. You are then able to check online that it has been received. The ABTA code of practice requires that you receive a reply within 28 days. That does not have to be a decision on your complaint - sending multiple emails or letters will not speed anything up and can even delay things or cause confusion.

Did you have a rep? If so did you complete a complaints form whilst there?

fwh

I am flying out to Egypt on 28th of September and have still not recieved tickets--have booked with this company before but this will definiately be the last time they are absolutely CRAP

Update on tickets---------- they arrived this morning but still not happy with them will never book with them again

No rep in resort rather there is a number you can call if you experience problems. Probably says a lot that I decided to complain directly to the hotel in resort.
Will take your advice and write recorded delivery, have already done this to Iberostar

PS received a letter today from holiday gems. As you all suggested they have asked that I send my complaint recorded delivery and that it could take some time to investigate. Feel as though they are listening which has to be a very positive sign .

Booked my holiday with HG last night - was a wee bit concerned having read all the negative posts -

All Inclusive 3* hotel including transferes to Benidorm under £500-00 a Bargain -

Only Going to See the Famous Glasgow Ranger in Valencia in the Champions League.

So far so good - - got a call this afternoon from the lovely Carol - lovely Scots girl - confirming booking

Then - trying to sell luggage - no need a couple of choice Rangers shirts and a few under garments is all you need.

Then Carol offered the earlier one - at the same cost - cant do that one - so was happy to pay an extra £30-00 for the flights I wanted - still dirt cheap at £530-00.

Was promised my transer and hotel vouchers - they duly arrived at 3-30pm.

As I say all good so far - will update later

I used Holidaygems. Well, they never answered the phone in the after sales dept, they never replied to email queries. Also, please be aware that they send you a load of bumpf about how you have to pay extra to take a suitcase....CHECK WITH THE CARRIER- In this case the carrier was Thompsons No Frills- I rang the airline directly and they said they were quite happy for passengers to have one suitcase each of up to 20kg- so I ignored the Holidaygems bumpf. However, one other Holidaygems customer I spoke to in Egypt told me that Holidaygems had rung him up and told him he could pay £50 odd now or pay £96 at the airport for his suitcase...He was so freaked out at the £96 that he gave them his credit card details to pay the £50 odd over the phone.....He also flew with Thompsons!!!!!!!! I advised him to get his money back for the suitcase. It seems to me that Holidaygems are keen on selling you whatever they can and getting your money but aren't very good at post sales service.

just booked a holiday to tenerife for two weeks at the end of the month and was very pleased with the service provided by holiday gems and with the agent whose name was claire ty john p

Cant rate the service highly enough, Damien look at all combinations to suit our familys requirements. Would defo recommend the company and they will be my first call in future, cheers Damien, we will have a beer and think of you on the beach at Christmas.

Hi all,
I made the mistake of booking with HG last night before doing my usual due diligence and checking a site like this one first.
Lowe and behold I received a call from them this morning telling me everything was booked and asked if I wanted to check bags in as we're flying with Monarch to Egypt and they don't include these in the price. I said I was a little annoyed as this should have been included or have the option (like there is an option to add on transfers), they told me the price of checking in bags would be £40 each now or £75 at the airport. I said fine and I will book one bag in as we're only going for a week and can get everything into one.
I then decided to check Monarch's website directly and chose the exact same flights, yes the inital cost didn't include checkin baggage but when I got to that section it was only £20 per bag!!

I called back their post sales number (if you phone their main number they give you this in a recorded message at the start), was on hold for 15 minutes, then quoted my "summary reference" (which came in an email last night) and they said the booking wasn't on the system yet and to call sales back!

I then called sales back to enquire why they were charging £40 a bag when the airline was £20, they said its the price they get it at from their broker (surely they are the broker?) and they make no money on it. I told them I wasn't happy with this and wanted to check if the one bag had been added, the guy said he didn't know as the person I spoke to earlier has it on their system and wouldn't be uploaded to the backend server until later on (hardly a good CRM system!), I said ok put me through the person I spoke with earlier. I was put on hold only then to be told by the same guy the person I spoke to this morning had gone home for the day and won't be in until Thursday (it was 12:30pm!!) and then said he had put a note on the system that 2 bags had been added at a cost of £80 (couldn't tell me that 30 seconds ago!), I was furious when I had specifically said one bag. The guy then said with Monarch its 2 bags minimum (what if I was travelling alone??), I said I wanted a refund on the holiday as I have been misold and didn't agree to the extra £80, you can guess the response I received to that.
They said the person I spoke to this morning would call me on Thursday to discuss a refund of the baggage, I said forget it I will be calling my credit card company to reclaim the money.

I have now sent a letter to my credit card company stating the facts that I have been mis-sold, didn't authorise an extra £80 and that this transaction fulls under the Distance Selling act, which gives the consumer up to 7 days to cancel a product or service which is purchased over the internet or phone.

(Google Distance Selling - First link)

I will report back when I hear from my credit card company.

But one word for Holiday Gems..........

Sorry you've had a bad experience. I hope you get some joy from your credit card company but unfortunately the Distance Selling Regulations do not apply to holidays.
Monarch do only charge £20 per checked bag to Egypt but everyone or no-one on their charter flight bookings have to check a bag. It can't be split so they were right when they said it was a 2 bag minimum.
As regards them saying that is the price they get from their broker. Holiday Gems will have gone through another company to book the flights. I would have thought they would have booked them through Avro but apparently not if that is what they are getting charged for checked in luggage. Maybe they were getting the flight cheaper elsewhere but being charged more for checked in luggage. Who knows!

I hope you can get something sorted satisfactorily.

Thanks for the quick reply, in any case I didn't agree to £80 extra being taken off my card, so its effectively theft on there part!!
I have a quoted price in an email which is my evidence and they have taken a different amount, should be open and shut as far as the credit card company are concerned.

Cheers,

booked a holiday with this company.they were very quick to take my money but after that i got no response from the company.due to go on holiday 9-10-10 and still no travel documents.im not very optimistic.i would not recomend this company to my worst enemy

i dont beliveit after 5 more emails to holiday gems and a similar amount to global travel the documents finaly arrived at 2pm on the 8-10-10. the stress has been unbelivable.hope the rest of the holiday gets better

*Admin edit post removed*

Sorry Greenshoes but due to an email from the company (who are monitoring the posts on here) I have had, again to remove a post from members.

We'll be making contact with someone this week to get this matter sorted. As in keeping with the sites impartiality, any posts, either positive or negative, that we suspect may not be genuine will be removed also.

hi we have booked with holiday gems and still no tickets and we go in 4 days,have tried ringing them no reply, so hopeing tickets turn up on monday,has anybody had there tickets so late before there flight leaves