Lady Lucks Naffed Off To Benidorm!

Well, it didn’t take Lady Luck long to pack her bags and ‘do one’. Almost as soon as I finished writing my previous post filled with all the wonderful things which had been happening to us, I was delivered a great pile of crap from the gods above. It all began when HolidayGems contacted us to let us know that they could no longer honour the price that had originally quoted us online as “it simply wasn’t possible”.

I spent ten to fifteen minutes on the phone speaking arguing with some guy that seemed to think that it was highly amusing that I had ever believed it to be possible to achieve an all-inclusive holiday for the price that their website had actually quoted. Why would anyone believe a price that they see on the internet to be correct? Well for one, it is the price that the company has actually quoted following using their search form, the price which was visibly displayed on our computer screen and secondly, it was the price that we had agreed to pay and had entered our credit card details to do so with. In short, HolidayGems turned out to be a bunch of swindlers just after more of our money and quite frankly I wasn’t up for playing their games or increasing our holiday price by £500. We therefore cancelled our holiday with this ‘Holiday Faux’ and went back to square one.

We then found yet another ‘online deal’ with www.HolidayDiscountCentre.co.uk and after spending almost thirty-six minutes on the phone sealing a ‘bargain deal’ we found that once again we were having the wool pulled over our eyes as following giving them our credit card details, they too began playing games with us by changing their prices, adding unmentioned extras and even attempting to downgrade our accommodation from All-Inclusive to half-board. We tried to back out of the offer at this point but were warned that we would then be charged cancellation fees having only given our financial credentials moments before. We therefore decided to bite the bullet and just go with it, we both want to go on holiday this summer and quite frankly we couldn’t be bothered being messed around by yet more companies and so we settled with what seemed to be the best offer at the time.

Twenty-four hours later after spending a few hours arguing the toss with Paul over the holiday booking situation, I decided to contact HolidayDiscountCentre to complain about the change of accommodation standard and the added charges. I began the conversation by threatening to speak to Trading Standards and ABTA regarding the matter should my issues be unresolved and low and behold, they changed their tune and offered us what we had originally been quoted (all-inclusive standard). Whilst some of the extra charges still remained we understood that these were due to added luggage allowance and mandatory boarding fees. No doubt just another con to empty our pockets but at least we managed to achieve our original goal which was to book a holiday for all four of us to Benidorm, staying in an all-inclusive hotel with a pool which is situated near to the beach all for under £1.5K.

My only worry now is that we are still awaiting an email confirmation from SuperEscapes (the company that HolidayDiscountCentre booked our holiday through) and whilst they promised this would arrive earlier on this evening, there is nothing whatsoever in my inbox other than the usual adverts and ‘New Post’ alerts which most blogger subscribers receive. If I haven’t heard back from them by tomorrow afternoon then I will once again be spending yet more time on the phone to both HolidayDiscountCentre and SuperEscapes regarding this matter.

My other concern is that having googled ‘Super Escapes’ I only seem to be able to find negative reviews upon the company and I am now stressed to say the least that I may have bagged a ‘lemon’ rather than a ‘bargain’.

Where’s Lady Luck when I need her? She’s naffed off some place else, probably Benidorm at some all-inclusive hotel sipping Sangria and scoffing Tappas.