Thread: Thomas Cook problems, really need advice on this.

I`ve just signed up to this site and i`m hoping you can help me.
I`ll be as brief as I can and try and explain my problems.

OK, last September we booked our holiday for this year.
We had wanted to take advantage of the offer of a free Disney dining plan and we were specific when we booked.
The TA came up with a holiday , 2 weeks in Orlando staying at the Wilderness Lodge Hotel with Ultimate Disney tickets and the free Disney dining plan.
This is for me, my girlfriend and my 2 daughters aged 7 and 16.

The price was £5463 ,with a 10 % discount this came to £4943.

We agreed and paid our deposit and have been paying the rest since then.

We were preparing to pay our final payment a few weeks back but we had a few questions for the Travel agent first.
So last week I went into the shop to clear up our queries.
We had wanted to know everything was booked OK, that our transfers from the airport were in fact booked and that there was no problem with the Disney dining plan.

This is where the problems begin, it turns out we were not on the Disney dining plan, the person doing the booking was meant to make a phone call to confirm our booking and our eligibility for the free dining. Apparently she didn`t do this. Now this is according to the girl I was talking to last week, I`ve no idea who she was meant to phone or if there was another reason I wasn`t being told.


So, this was a bit o a shock to me and I asked what Thomas Cook intended to do about it, they asked me to pay £1300 to get the dining plan and when i told them that was unacceptable to me and that I wanted to cancel they said it would cost me £500 cause I`d lose my deposit.
Can`t say i was overly happy at this point, they actually asked me if I could prove that i had indeed asked for the dining plan in the first place.

So not wanting to explode in the shop, I left with the understanding the young girl looking into the matter for me would phone me later.

Oh and I should mention the girl who took my original booking no longer works there so we can`t ask her.

Anyway the phone call came and they had a plan.
They would cancel our holiday, and rebook us , 2 problems though. Number 1 it would be a different hotel and number 2 it would cost us another £70 cause this Hotel was slightly dearer.

Again I`m not overly happy, but paying £1300 for the dining plan isn`t an option so after a bit of haggling we got the £70 fee waived.

Again I`m not sure why they just couldn`t rebook us into the Wilderness Lodge but they said there was a reason for it, something about stop/sale for anyone who knows what that means.


So thats the first problem, the next problem came on Tuesday night when we went to pay off the remaining balance.
It turns out they have changed systems and our booking was on the old system and the new system can`t see our money. Sow hen we went to pay it said the outstanding balance was £3639. A bit of a shock but the guy explained they were waiting for a refund cheque coming through from head office cause of the original balls up they had made.

OK, anyway he gives us a receipt and we leave.
When we had a look at the receipt when we got home it said
total cost £5,080
Discount (541.00)
total cost to customer £4539

hmmm, my original receipt shows the total cost to customer is £4943.

Disney have a special offer on at the minute, free dining plus 14 nights for the price of 7.

It looks like this holiday is £400 cheaper and they have decided they will just keep the difference.Or maybe I`m wrong.

So any advice from anyone in the know who can explain this to me would be appreciated, or any advice as to what to do next.

I should be relaxing looking forward to my holiday but I`ve absolutely no confidence in anything Thomas cook have done so far and am sitting waiting for something else to go wrong.

Oh dear what a cock up.

Let me explain what every holiday maker that books in a travel agent MUST walk out with, what they MUST be sent, and what they can demand.

When you agree to a holiday with a travel agent you should get a booking form that lists everything on that holiday you are agreeing to pay for. This is usually manually inputted into the travel agent's computer and will churn out whatever they want it to say. They have total ability to type anything in extra text boxes, so if you have agreed to something and it doesn't say it on the booking form get them to type it in manually and reprint it. Make sure it says EVERYTHING in it that you are paying for UNLESS you have a brochure with the exact tour written in it. This goes for premium seats, airport carparking, etc

For example if you are putting anything together in bits and pieces, everything must be listed down. If you are buying a preset tour that is listed in a brochure, then it is quite alright to have a booking form that says "New England falls tour page 93 of Thomas Cook tour brochure edition 3 2009" - because the whole details are in the brochure.

Next stage is you MUST be sent the supplier's invoice - this is the invoice they send to the travel agent listing everything you have paid for. A lot of suppliers send it to the travel agents 7-14 days after the booking, although some companies now have einvoices which are printed direct off the computer as soon as the booking is done.

So in this case you want the e-invoice from Thomas Cook which is actually what has been booked on the Thomas Cook computer at head office - this should list everything unless it is with a different supplier. Most disney holidays that are booked on viewdata (the system that looks like ceefax) will have an instant einvoice printed.

So get a copy of all of those - they will be dated and issue numbered (for example if you change or amend a booking you will have an einvoice from the first booking date then a second one from the amendment date - most have an issue number so you can track everytime a new one is issued)

If you are running with the same holiday and it has amendments it will always have the same original booking number (this is the number that the viewdata sytem churns out when you press confirm booking). If you have had the holiday cancelled you can tell as you will have a new booking number - note the booking reference number is not the same usually as the travel agent's booking reference number which is just the store computers file number for your name address details etc.

So get all this together and I will tell you what it is saying.

Oh and stop sale means that there has been an issue with the hotel in question - not a bad issue, just that there may have been an error on a system which allocated too many rooms for example, or that the company have not been permitted to sell that hotel anymore, or that the hotel owners are not offering the hotel rooms for sale because they might be renovating the hotel - there are many many reasons a stop sale can occur and some are temporary and others are permanent.

Me...

Thank you for the reply, quick update. Went in today to see the manager, it turns out the £400 we have lost is in fact our deposit because "we" cancelled our original booking.
The manager refused to see my point of view and was convinced that they had every right to keep this £400 because as she said we had a problem, they resolved it and we`ve got a better hotel out of it.

Have to say I disagreed quite strongly and told her they made a mistake, resolved it by selling me a £4500 holiday for £4950. I thought they should be bending over backwards to give me my £400 back, and here`s the really funny bit, if I cancel I`d now lose £800, yep they want another deposit off me if I try and take my custom elsewhere.

So she said she would phone their customer services department( that must be a hell of a place to work) and phone me back because I don`t think she appreciated the looks the other customers were giving us.

I`ll give her the chance to phone me back but does anyone know where the next step would be?

It is a requirement of any holiday company that a cancellation cannot be actioned unless that cancellation request is in writing. So get them to show you the letter you have written. You need to decide exactly what you want the resolution to be. Make it clear and stick to what you want. If that means total cancellation and no charges for everything and start again, fine - make it clear. If it means you want a certain amount of money back, again fine, but just stick to what you want the resolution to be so everyone knows where you are coming from

It is a requirement of any holiday company that a cancellation cannot be actioned unless that cancellation request is in writing. So get them to show you the letter you have written

.

Thank you, didn`t realise this. This will help because they won`t have one.

You need to decide exactly what you want the resolution to be. Make it clear and stick to what you want. If that means total cancellation and no charges for everything and start again, fine - make it clear. If it means you want a certain amount of money back, again fine, but just stick to what you want the resolution to be so everyone knows where you are coming from

Thats my main problem, I don`t know what I want. I`ll be happy enough to get my £400 back or if they give me it all back I`d be happy to cancel and start again.

Having had a think though , if push comes to shove its the £400 I`d prefer, mainly cause its easier than rebooking elswhere. So thats what I`ll go with.

I`ve just had a phone call from the manager to say their "legal department " is looking at it

Do they have a legal department?
Is this good or bad?

I would suggest you contact them and say you want a full cancellation of everything at no cost and a full refund and you will book elsewhere. Use the classic phrase: "The relationship between the shop and myself as a customer has broken down and I feel I cannot continue dealing with them because the difference of what they say they will do and what they actually do is different. I am happy with a full cancellation of all bookings at a full refund and I will not seek any further compensation." I will then help you find your ideal holiday! There are other techniques to use if they get funny, but hopefully this will sort it.

Originally Posted by JED BARTLETT

I`ve just had a phone call from the manager to say their "legal department " is looking at it

Do they have a legal department?
Is this good or bad?

#1 Yes they do have a legal department.
#2 Do we have anything in writing which shows you must give in writing the fact you wish to cancel your holiday- I do not believe this to be true.