Villa Plus

[Villa Plus]

Villa Plus do occasionally have comments from clients who have not enjoyed their holiday. Meggie123 is clearly very upset, and had a number of problems during their holiday, as have some others who have posted negative comments on here. Kirsty1986 and Meggie123 both have many valid complaints, there are no excuses for this, and as customers of Villa Plus in many respects we have let them down. There are matters that are of clear concern to us that we have / are addressing. We have expressed these to the villa managers and owners, and further instructed our local office where villa managers do not perform, to use our own company funds when necessary.

Regarding in general this particular villa’s overall rating, in 2008 and 2009, the customer surveys show that most customers rated the villa as either excellent, very good or good, and rated their overall holiday enjoyment as good to very good.

In 2009, from all our 700 plus villas, our customer average villa ratings score was 2.05(1 being excellent, 2 being very good, 3 being good, 4 being average and 5 being poor) In 2008, this was 2.01.

Our customer survey figures show that most customers do have a very good holiday, we’d be very disappointed if it wasn’t. The vast majority of comments available on the Internet about Villa Plus are of a positive nature. We are the second largest Villas with Pools operator in the UK and send away nearly 70,000 clients a year to over 700 individual villas.

Notwithstanding any individual comments made on this website, below are our general and honest views.

1) When customers post poor comments we have to say that on the whole they are correct. Yes, sometimes we do get customers who ask for substantial compensation or they will “give us a bad review” which we never give in to, but overall most negative comments have a lot of truth about them. Sometimes maintenance issues or things happen totally out of our control, and sometimes we get things wrong.

2) We have to work with the owners and push/advise them when something needs changing. For example when does an older sofa get thrown out, when does a villa need re-painting, when does a bathroom need updating?

3) We aim to be as honest as possible about the service we provide, which is why we give out lots of information, even if it isn’t a selling point on many occasions.

4) Customers who book late have shown us to be far more likely to complain than those that booked early. Many customers who book late, book a villa that is not quite what they wanted as there is less availability, so they perhaps don’t enjoy their holiday as much.

5) It often doesn’t take a lot for a customer who has genuinely had a grievance to put a poor comment on websites such as this one, but it can take a lot for a customer to post a good one.

6) Since the year that this blog has started, Villa Plus has sent away 187,469 customers on villa holidays. We do not always get it right, we do on occasions get it wrong and sometimes we make wrong decisions. But we do try to get it right and we do care.

7) Villa Plus has at a substantial cost, funded 24 hour service centres in each resort to do our best to provide a good service, and we apologise to any customers that have not received full service and value.

Villa Plus is an independent tour operator, established in 1986 and although relatively large in terms of providing villa holidays, the company structure is very much based on how we first started. Service has always come first and will continue to do so. No overseas representative or holiday sales personnel have ever been paid commission to sell anything – be it an excursion or a villa holiday - and that is the model that we will always continue with. Villa Plus is very financially sound, and we believe that one of the main reasons for this is precisely because we have never adopted commission based ideals that put revenue before service and good advice. 23 years is a long time to be in business and we will always try hard to never forget why customers have chosen us.

We do again apologise to anyone who has not received the standard of service they deserve. They may read this and not believe it, but any poor comments posted on websites are taken to heart by everyone involved, and we’re always developing ways to improve.

Lastly, these comments made by us have been done after careful thought, and by several of us at Villa Plus. We consider all elements of this forum, together with our replies, to be extremely important.

[meggie123]

In reply to your reply!! A sofa needs changing long before the upholstery is removed leaving only a torn grey lining material. A place needs painting with decent paint when it first starts to look shabby. If you don't know this I would hate to see the inside of your houses. I would be ashamed to take the furniture in Villa Catorce to the tip in case anyone saw me. The other comment you have made - if you book late you may not get the accomadation you want?? I booked this place way back - months and months before we went in September. You are still skirtin around the health and safety issues regarding the poolwith the broken tile and the basement stinking of damp. I notice you are still offering this villa for rent on your site. SHAME ON YOU.

[sputnick]

I have in the past praised Villa Plus, but I have been looking at this forum & I have to say they are not like they used to be. Last year we booked with them, we changed our villa booking quite a while before we went, the office staff couldn't have been better. But big mistake, villa not quite in area we wanted, but still a good area or so we thought, half way through the holiday we were broken into,(when you looked around the Villa could see not the first time) the staff on call were excellent, but our rep made us feel as if it was our fault. We are used to setting alarms, it is second nature to us, we have on at home, all I can say is their alarms work VERY different to ours here.We felt she lied to us, saying that the alarm had gone off at the Police station, when the police came that was the first they knew that it had gone off. My husband & son entered the villa & switched the alarm off, my eldest son & I went to the side of the villa because I noticed something was missing off the washing line, I found some of our stuff, went around the back & the master bedroom shutters had been forced open and the glass doors broken open, the movement sensors can'thave been working cos they went through the bedroom cupboards, & all through the villa, & still the alarm didn't go off, we think we disturbed them. We tried to enjoy the rest of the holiday, but dreaded going back each night, the rep said "enjoy rest of hols, the can't take anything else",(they only took playstation games & camara charger), they had taken our feeling of security, Villa holidays cost a lot of money we wasted our money.We are as a family still suffering emotionaly over this, we went on holiday to florida this year, had a fantastic time but I felt sick every night going back to our villa, I kept thinking about last year. When we got back I expected a letter at least from Villa PLus saying they were sorry about what happened, but got nothing, we thought about complaining about the rep but what was the point when they didn't even acknowledge it had happenend. By the way the villa was OURA, in pria do oura, I have just read reviews on villa plus site about this villa, about the time we went & well I can't believe what I'm reading, the maids cleaned it better when we left because after the breakin there was stillglass under the bed. I would not recomend this villa to anyone.