www.sunmastr.com, freedomdirect.co.uk, otbeach.com

by **scottygirl** on Tue Jun 19, 2007 11:44 am

They are worse than useless, it shouldn't cost you anything if it's their mistake. Laterly I was put on to their supervisor, Joanne, who never ever called me back. Strangely enough, each individual I spoke to seemed really nice and seemed to listen to what I had to say and reassured me that they would sort it and guess what...... they never called me back! I hope you get it sorted out, the last thing you want is to have your holiday cut short by a day. Let me know how you get on.

by **M,K,R&R** on Sat Jun 23, 2007 8:42 am

I got a phonecall, Thursday, they asked me to confirm the day and time I had originally asked for, they said they would sort it out, no mention of cost and that they would send written confirmation. So, just pending seeing it in writing, looks like I'm sorted. Their customer service seems to look at things based on how urgent it seems to be. When they realised I had 4 weeks to go they seemed to jump through hoops to resolve it, shame they didn't sort it 3 months ago, then they might not be so busy!

Good luck with yours and I hope you have a great holiday.

by **scottygirl** on Tue Jun 26, 2007 8:33 am

Hi, Hope you get it through in writing, I go next Wednesday and it still hasn't been sorted. Despite them keep telling me that the supervisor or manager will call me back they never have so I put it in writing, recorded delivery, a week ago and still haven't had a response. I've done another letter saying that as they haven't responded I'll be contacting ABTA and will pass my complaint to my lawyer. Don't have a lawyer, but hoping that it might make them do something. I'm not holding out much hope I'll just have to go and hope the hotel take pity on me and give me the type of room I thought I had paid for in the first place! Let me know if you get sorted.

by **fd.co.uk** on Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:59 am

We are extremely sorry to hear about the problems that you have encountered with our customer service department. The growth of our business over the past few months has put a great strain on the department.

In an attempt to ensure that our level of customer service and response meets the customers expectations we have recruited additional staff, increased the days we are open from 5 to 7 and increased our cs opening ours from 5pm to 9pm during the week and 6pm on weekends.

We have also introduced a maximum response time for queries / complaints and we are very close to ensuring that all complaints are answered within 7 days.

All comments from our customers are taken very seriously. Once again we do apologise for problems that our customers have recently experienced and we are working as hard as we can to ensure this unacceptable level of response is not repeated in the future.

We can assure all our customers who have travelled with us over the last ten years, well in excess of 1,400,000 people that we shall continue to improve the level of service we provide.

by **M,K,R&R** on Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:29 pm

To FD.CO.UK, excuse my cynicism, but I find it a bit poor that you respond to this public forum to try and protect your image, but no one would respond to me directly! I had to constantly contact you to get anywhere. AND re my last note, yes it is now sorted, I was told I would get written confirmation of this... Guess what? I didn't, I had to ring again last week and chase it up again. After a phone call to your customer services dept on Friday 13th July, (I had to connect via your payment line as pressing option 3 wouldn't connect to your customer services number!) I finally got an email telling me you had corrected your error, highlighted to you on 17th March.
You have cost me hours of time, the cost of dozens of phone calls and also I am hiring a car whilst away, I couldn't do this because until you did what was required as I couldn't be sure of my return date. The cost of hiring the same car has now increased by about �40.00.
I didn't get an apology either!

by **sands** on Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:30 pm

booked with Freedom Direct to go to tossa beach hotel in tossa de mar spain,we got there at midnight 25th june,16 of us and we paid for 6 rooms,on arrival we were told there was NOTHING booked for us, after tears and arguments with management they finally gave us beds at 3 in the morning only to chuck us out at 10 o'clock next morning,we phoned freedom direct and were in contact with them all day,they told us to stay put while they sort it out,they promised us faithfully they would sort it out,but by 5 o'clock that afternoon the management came to us and told us that Freedom Direct had authorised us to go to other hotels,we were devestated,as we had done numerous phone calls before we went away to this company to make sure we were all together,as this holiday was my fathers wish as there are a lot of illnesses within the family and we all help each other out,Freedom Direct left us in heat with our cases and did'nt care,the sad thing is its going to be a battle to get our money back and it could be to late to take another family holiday for some of us,so i would not reccommend FREEDOM DIRECT to anyone

by **M,K,R&R** on Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:00 pm

Nightmare! And I thought I had a problem!

by **fd.co.uk** on Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:21 pm

To M,K,R & R,

We are sorry that you feel our post is a cynical attempt to improve our image. A great deal of time and effort has gone and is going into resolving the issues you and a number of other customers have had.

As we previously stated many customers travel with freedom direct year after year, receive an extremely high level of service and have no cause for complaint. We also note that you have previously travelled with us and did not encounter any problems.

From the limited details we have of your recent holiday we shall attempt to retrieve the details and respond to you directly by post.

by **kazl** on Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:12 pm

I think your posts are dreadful....Your company would not get my money after reading this. Excuses are dreadful. People not being phoned back time after time, letters not being answered, phones not being picked up...could it get any worse? Though strangely enough you have enough time to come on here and type away!!!
Mad , mad world

by **HW Techie** on Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:23 pm

Welcome all!

We're happy to see Freedom Direct taking this step and posting on the HW forum. It seems as if they recognise they've had issues and are trying to deal with them by investing in better customer services.

If you do have an issue with Freedom Direct as a customer, please take it up with them first directly.

If you then feel you have cause for grievance please feel free to post your experience and/or opinions.

It's nice to see a tour operator at least participating in the discussion and FD should be applauded for this, but again we would ask that your first point of contact should be with them.

HW