Holiday Troubles

cson

Ok, just back from a snow holiday and quite a few things didn't go to plan. If any boardsies could give any advice or tell me if this is worth pursuing it'd be much appreciated.

What went wrong;

• Flights: Our first flight was delayed due to the plane having to re-route via Luton to fix a door. This delayed us by about 2 hours. The airline gave us two bottles of wine as compensation but one of our party was under 18 and to be honest it was scant compensation
• Connections: We got a bus to a station 2 hours away where a taxi was supposed to be waiting for us. There was no taxi and we had to wait an hour for one. The taxi took us up to the resort but took ages due to putting on snow chains. We were about 4 hours late arriving as a result.
• Lift Passes: We were expressly told that lift passes were included, they weren't whne we got there and we had to buy them at a cost of €302 for the four of us.
• Apartment: The apartment was filthy and they cutlery was stained and obvously hadn't been washed. There was rubbish under the beds and the door was stained too - I'm very afraid to speculate what it was that was on the door. The place smelled strongly of fags too. We told our rep about it but she did nothing (she told us she was gonna have it cleaned)
• Connections Home: We were dumped out of the apartment at 10am and told to arse around the place until 1pm when a taxi was coming for us. We were more or less abandoned by the rep. We got a taxi to the same depot we'd arrived at, at the start and got on a mini bus. The mini bus was stopped by the police at the airport (Something about the drivers licence or something) and it delayed us by 40 mins, resulting in the flight being delayed due to us being late to check in. This caused us to miss our bus home from Dublin airport that we'd purchased a return ticket for. (We were supposed to arrive at 8pm, the bus was leaving at 9.15pm, we landed at 9pm)

Basically Crystal were a complete bollocks and really didn't want to know about us. We spent a good bit on the holiday and really think we deserved better.

Tbh, I'm not hopeful about complaining but I'll do it anyway. I imagine what we experienced is par for the course and they'll reply with some ****e about us being "unlucky".

Any advice would be greatly appreciated though.

Thanks,

cson

Beano

probably you're best chance of getting something is for the lift pass. were you told they were included or did it say that in the brochure?

jor el

Did you have holiday insurance, sometimes that covers things like this. Also, if you paid by a credit card you may gave additional cover.

Write a letter to the travel agent explaining clearly what happened. As mentioned, you're best bet of recompense is with the lift passes. Did you get a receipt for these or pay with credit card, you may be asked for proof you had to pay.

cson

Reckoned the lift pass would be the only thing to stand up. It was my mate that organised it and in two e-mails that the operator replied to she expressly said the lift passes were inclusive. We kept the reciepts so hopefully something should come of that.

The other stuff.... basically we won't be using crystal ever again and I don't expect anything off them.

Thanks for the replies lads.

Buceph

Do you have receipts for the list pass, and for any expenses you incurred because of the other problems. Do you have photos of the apartment? Check your terms and conditions. Most travel agents will have set procedures for dealing with this when you and the agent can't reach an agreement, most likely arbitration. Arbitrators are totally impartial and completely seperate from the agent. I know someone who does it. That could be your best bet.

DubLegs

did you complaint to the rep in resort regarding the accom and the lift passes etc?
hold on to anything that you have that is in writing from them to state that the passes were inclusive.
On the flights not sure you can claim anything on them for the delay though. i could be wrong there.