Lastminute.com and its "Customer Service"

[mani99]

Hi all,

 

Had some great "fun and games" recently with Lastminute.com. My wife and I had planned to travel to Vietnam with a 3 night stop over in Dubai. The problem was that I got my dates mixed up and we ended up missing the flight - my fault I know and I was willing to pay a small fee to change to the next available flight.

 

But thanks to the sheer level of incompetence from the folks at Lastminute, our 3 night stay ended up being 5 nights and 6 days.

 

The problem? They were unable to get us on to the next flight even though Emirates confirmed that the flight had plenty of seats left. Lastminute kept blaming Emirates saying that they would not quote a price and kept asking me to speak to them. For two full days I was going back and forth between the two to get a flight out (my mobile bill hit the 500 pound mark!).

 

Emirates made it very clear that they couldnt do anything as part of the journey included getting a flight with another airline so only Lastminute could arrange the tickets. They also confirmed that the prices were available to them and they had all the authorisation to make changes to the booking.

 

Every single person I spoke to at Lastminute would give me the same nonsense and constantly placing me on hold, or promise to call me back... but no phone call. I even managed to get to speak to the supervisor who assured me that he would call me back after speaking to Emirates. Guess what? No phone call.

 

Eventually I managed to get a flight but had to pay 440 pounds, which I personally think is excessive. Not only did I have to pay for that but I also had to pay the extra hotel charges while trying to sort this out. The employees at the hotel were shocked at how Lastminute worked and couldnt understand as to why such a simple thing took two full days to resolve.

 

Even after I paid for the change, Lastminute forgot to email the e-Ticket to me so the following morning I was once again on the phone to them.... which lasted 20 minutes!

 

In total it cost me over 1000 pounds for missing a flight and I am furious at how awful Lastminute were in trying to change the flight to the next available one.

 

Apologies for the long rant... I wanted to know how should I proceed in complaining and hopefully getting some sort of compensation?

 

Thanks!