Thread: First Choice & Virgin who to Sue ???

Can anyone help me. My wife has been very ill and for her birthday in July I gave first choice (my local travel agent) a list of destinations I wanted to go to - Good Food, Sunny Hot Beach for 5 days. They could not do any of them ie booked flights no accomodation. However they called and said that they could do a package to Barbados at the Hilton. To be honest it was a bit more expensive than I wanted but I thought blow it my wife has been so ill I will treat her its her birthday and our anniversary. I borrowed the money off of my parents £2500 for 5 days. I booked for breakfasts, transfers a room over looking the beach. Arrived at Barbados, no transfers, and smack bang in the middle of the Rainy Season. We got to the Hilton no record of us being booked in there. Showed our travel receipt they let us in. However the Hilton Hotel were undertaking massive building works we were woken every day with a pneumatic drill breaking up concrete floors, the private luxury beach when not flooded was vibrating with the drilling I can only say it was a nightmare. My wife was in tears and wanted to come home. We phoned first choice who said that there was nothing they could do but speak to Virgin as they were only the tour operator. Spoke with Virgin who refused to help. We had to sit it out. When we went to leave the hotel we had to pay a bill of $700 as we had been charged for breakfasts even though we had paid First Choice. Got back to the UK wrote a letter of complaint to First Choice who passed it too virgin. Virgin passed it back to first choice. Virgin also wrote saying that they were inundated with complaints and could not look at ours but to speak to First Choice. First Choice said that its Virgin's responsibility. The long and short is no one will accept responsibility. The Hilton Hotel said they warned all tour operators of the works with the booking so not their problem. I have tried to deal with the matter in writing got no where. Who should I sue First Choice who took the money provided a receipt and invoice or Virgin who flew us there ???? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have supplied both Virgin and First Choice with over 75 pictures of building works and emails from the hilton saying that they did warn all tour operators and have been displaying warning signs on their tour operators website for months. I am also cross I know you can't guarantee weather anywhere in the world but its a bit different possible bad weather than being sent somewhere where its the rainy season and the hotel is undertaking work as its so quiet no one goes there in the rainy season Who does my complaint lie with any ideas?????

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This is how it works:

First Choice will have obtained a customer invoice from Virgin for your holiday. That customer invoice will be entirely from Virgin, and headed up so on their headed paper outlining everything that was booked and paid for. It is First Choice procedure that the invoice is handed to you. If it was not then whoever sold you the holiday at First Choice should be contacted and you demand the "supplier invoice" - in this case Virgin.

If you are being given the runaround the best way is to start the chargeback process on whatever card you paid on. Both credit cards and Visa Debit cards offer chargeback schemes but will require evidence you have made some effort to try to solve the issues with the company concerned. Legally your contract is with First Choice and that is who the chargeback will be against.

First Choice are right in one respect in that Virgin should be sorting out the difficulties you had with the holiday directly with you. But you really need that invoice to show what was booked by First Choice on your behalf. It proves that Virgin were given clear instructions on what you wanted and what they offered.

For your information BBC Working Lunch BBC2 Friday lunchtime are covering holiday problems so you might quickly like to get your complaint to them to have a look at in the next 24hrs.

get back to me once you have asked First Choice for the invoice and we will see where we go from there.

Cheers,

Andy

Hi and thank you for your reply I really do appreciate it. I paid cash which means no chargeback..... Have tried to get hold of the invoice but It appears the flight was booked with Virgin but the hotel was booked directly by First Choice it was not a package holiday.....So both are denying responsibility. I spoke with Citizens advice who in my area were pretty clueless. They say that I should sue who ever I paid the money to ie First Choice but does not sound that promising. Do you think its worth issuing a claim to First Choice who will have to answer to a court if they get sent the paperwork in the hope that it may prompt one of the two too sort it out internally ?

The bottom line is that it sounds like you paid the whole lot to First Choice in one sum, therefore your grief is with them. All hotel operators tell the travel agents whether they have building work on or not and the travel agent must then add those into the booking notes and explain that they have contacted the customer and explained about the building work and give them an option to change or cancel the booking.

This appears not to have happened. Did you book at a First Choice branch? You should go into them and ask them to go through the booking/reservation notes with you. If it says hotel have called them then it is their issue.

The other way around is to approach the Hilton chain direct. You might find that even if it was not their fault but you are very nice to them they might give you some vouchers for future use. In fact approach all of them - it has been know to double up on compensation where a hotel and the holiday company give you something... if that is the case keep quiet!

Your complaint should definately be with first choice, virgin were only your 'airline' and the complaint you have is nothing to do with your flights, what first choice did with your holiday was to 'dynamically' package it which is NOT the same as a package holiday. As travel agents we always make sure to explain to someone when we are going to arrange a holiday this way as it is not 'bonded' in the same way as a 'traditional' package. This should have been explained to you at the time of booking. First choice must have booked flight only and then transfer only and then hotel only this as I say is NOT a package and you don't have the same cover, I would only book something like this as a last resort because if something goes wrong with 1 part of the booking you would have to seperatly sort out the other parts - very time consuming!

Hi Thanks for all your wonderful replies above. I did what you said and I got a letter from First Choice acknowledging my complaints and a cheque for £327.00 now that might seem fair but given that the holiday cost over £3500.00 it represents about 10% they say they have calculated all our complaints ie the place was a building site and in complete chaos and they as a gesture of goodwill sent £327.00. Now I feel that it should be higher I am not being greedy here but the holiday was a complete shambles from start to finish. I feel that they have sent me a little bit of money to shut me up and make me go away. I havent cashed the cheque as I feel it should be returned and a proper offer put forward - I dont want to sound greedy im not but I feel the least they should have given is 50% back we didnt get to enjoy any of the holiday I would love to have your thoughts please thank you very much

Hi
I think you have been treated abysmally but you definately did the right thing contacting only First Choice. Your contract was with them regardless of who you flew with, which hotel you stayed with and whether First Choice sold you a package out of Virgin's brochure or dynamically packaged it by putting it together using different suppliers. Someone told you you wouldn't have the same protection if it is dyanmically packaged but the size of First Choice means they cannot afford not to have cover for dynamically packaged holidays they sell so you 'will' be covered.

What you could do is send a letter (again it must be recorded delivery - all correspondence with them should) and cc in ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents)

Atol also said this:
Problems & Complaints with a Tour Operator

Standards of Service

The CAA has no legal powers to regulate tour operators' standards of service. You should first take up the complaint with the company concerned. If the matter remains unresolved and the company is a member of either ABTA, TTA or The Global Travel Group you should contact them for advice. If not, try Consumer Direct on 08454 040506.

*************

I see no reason to let First Choice know this offer is not acceptable and return the cheque. They will know you are being serious and let them know you have sought legal advice and will follow the company's own complaints procedure and take this as far as need be.

You should, as someone else advised, write exactly what you would expect as a minimum of compensation - (obviously inflate the amount tho' as they are likely to haggle you down but if they don't that's a bonus!).

As for not telling you it was rainy season in July, that's a difficult one, you should push to say had the agent who sold you the holiday explained this you could have made the choice about whwther to go or not. That said Barbados, like the rest of the Caribbean and Florida have the rainy/hurricane season throughout our summer but it doens't stop people going and it is back luck if it rains your whole holiday.

The rest of your experience is just not acceptable tho'.

Good luck, I hope you get more and let us know!