Jolly Suites with Virgin Holidays

[duntiblaesnob]

Last week I booked a 10 day stay on a room only basis at the Jolly Suites Antigua with Virgin Holidays. At the time of booking the Suites were rated with 4 Virgin V's. We chose the suites over the Jolly Club regular rooms, as they were rated 3.5V's and had been reviewed as 'shabby' and 'basic, but adequate' on this and other review sites. Since it is less than 8 weeks to travel, we paid the amount in full. In the past week, Virgin have changed their rating of both properties to 3 V's(this I discovered by sheer chance whilst browsing on their website one day). Have been in touch with Virgin for an explanation, but am getting nowhere. To quote their reply exactly :

'all hotels/villas are all different and some may offer more and maybe different facilities and amenities than the others. There have been no changes to your accommodation just that they have changed the rating, they may have reviewed the villas and decided to change the rating. I am afraid we have no control over this;any tour operator can change the ratings when they feel it necessary when advertising different new hotels/villas'.

Am I being unreasonable to be annoyed ?
Their system of evaluation has evidently identified something that has clearly deemed it necessary to reduce the rating from 4V to 3V. How they can be so sure that this will not affect our perceptions of the property is hard to understand. If that is the case, then that makes the whole rating system totally irrelevant.
How the rating can be reduced without the price being affected is another question that comes to mind. I am sure most customers use the rating system as a reference such as we have done in this case. How then can they suggest that it's not important is highly unsatisfactory, and a matter which I am sure the Trading Standards in the UK will disagree with.

Does anyone know where I need to begin if I am to contest this?

We have booked and paid for in full what we originally believed to be 4*accommodation and are now in fact getting something we deliberately tried to avoid, which is anything considered to be worthy of less stars. Surely this disappointment is not unreasonable when one books with a company with such a high profile as Virgin Holidays. Being mis-lead and not realising it until guests arrive at their destination is something that in my opinion is unprofessional and which may cause unnecessary complaints to the local rep and dis-satisfaction at the start of and throughout the holiday.

Of course, there isn't anything that can be done at this late stage as
the location of the Jolly Suites is unbeatable and for this reason we
aren't interested in swapping to alternative accommodation, but I feel
that Virgin has let us down. I only hope that the accommodation will
not disappoint us and that the holiday will be the carribean dream
that we have been hoping for.