To be really bloody angry with Travel Republic?

[QueenStromba]

I've spent the last 3 hours on the phone with Travel Republic and have talked to ten different people because I got an email today saying that I can't have the hotel I booked and have been offered another hotel which is a 1 star rather than the 3 star that I booked and a mile or two from the hotel that I booked partly for it's location. I booked this hotel about three weeks ago and am flying out in 9 days so not only do I have far fewer options than I had when I originally booked, everything that is still available is stupidly expensive. I've just paid an extra £200 for a three day hotel stay because it would have cost me an extra hundred pounds to stay in a hotel of acceptable standard and I really couldn't bring myself to pay so much extra money and not end up in hotel as good as the one I had originally booked.

I've emailed ABTA about this but I can't find an email address for Kingston trading standards (where they are based). Does anyone have experience of making a complaint to the regulators and have any advice for the best way to go about things?

Yanbu. I had something similar with them about our holiday we're due to go on in September: the flight times changed by 12 hours, meaning we'd arrive at 3am with our 8m old ds, and the flights were one of the reasons I'd booked it! They also changed the airport, and when trying to resolve it, kept phoning me back to offer me the same bloody flights thinking they were different.

Arseholes.

We ended up taking a refund on the flights and rebooking with another airline ourselves. Would this not have been an option for you, booking the same hotel through a different operator? I'd look into that, and if you can, insist on a refund from travel republic. Despite their bleating, if there is any, they will back down.

I'm sure they've got to offer you accommodation of a similar or higher standard if they do this, btw, and may have been chancing their arm ...

I had a similar thing happen to me a few years ago, Id booked a central hotel in amsterdam and the travel company rang a few days later and said it had been double booked. (not sure which company it was)

They offered me a hotel on the outskirts of the city which i'd actually stayed at the year before but it was a 30 min bus ride into the city centre and we ended up spending a fortune on taxis.

I had a few cross phone calls, with them refusing to refund me because they had offered a hotel of a higher star, 3 when i'd booked 2 and it says in their terms and conditions they can do this blah blah...

I explained that the reason i'd booked this hotel was for its location and the one they were offering wasn't suitable but they were having none of it.

I worked in a nursery at the time and one of the parents was a solicitor, I asked his advice and he very kindly said he would write a letter free of charge on my behalf if they wouldn't refund or offer a hotel in a central location.

I rang the company and told them I had been speaking to a solicitor and if they didn't refund or offer a cental hotel I was taking legal action, they couldn't refunded me straight away.

In your case they are offering you a lower star accommodation surely they can't do that?

What do your terms and conditions say.

Perhaps phone them and say what I said, its worth a try.

Sorry just realised you didn't actually say they wouldn't refund you,

If it so close to your travel date do they not have to offer you compensation?

Its a disgrace if they don't.

BuntyCollocks: They said that they could refund me the price of the hotel but not the flights which made up the bulk of the cost of the holiday. My flights were £200 and the hotel was £100 which was more than I really wanted to pay in the first place. I've checked the hotel's website and there are no rooms available so it is definitely a case of overbooking (there were still rooms available according to the hotel's website when I booked but it was cheaper to go through Travel Republic). The thing I'm most angry about is that if I'd been told the hotel was full from the outset then I'd have just been able to book something else that I was happy with for the same price. Actually, I'm more angry that they're trying to fob me off with a worse hotel than the one I booked which is a couple of miles away. If they'd offered me another hotel of the same standard close to the one I'd booked then I'd be ok with it but to try and fob me off with hotel with 2 less stars and miles away just takes the piss. Travel Republic's justification for this seems to be that if I were to book that hotel now it would cost 50 quid more - of course it fucking would because I'm going there in a week (I'm pretty sure that if I'd booked that hotel originally then it would have cost 30/40 quid less than what I paid, Travel Republics own website say that rooms in my original hotel start at £14 per person per night and the hotel they offered me instead is £9 per person per night).

All Travel Republic were willing to do for me (other than refund the price of the hotel) was give me a 5% discount on the cost of another hotel. That took me 2 hours on the phone and talking to ten different people to achieve (that is actually ten people rather than an estimate). I'm just so angry and upset about this that I don't even have words for it. My long weekend has gone from costing £300 to £500. Fucking bastards, the difference is probably about what I will spend while I'm there.

bobanna: Yes they have offered to refund me but that really isn't the point since they left it so long that I would have to pay an extra 200 quid if I wanted to stay in a decent hotel.

I've just spent several hours giving Travel Republic a terrible review on the first three pages worth of google results for them. Even though it's undoubtedly going to fill my email with spam it has made me feel an awful lot better.