To ask how Pontins is still able to trade?

[pinkpetal2]

So I used to go as a child/teen to the Camber Sands Pontins resort last went in 2009. From 2005 now it has become so bad across each resort.

The reviews on trip advisor are terrible absolute shambles. Yet people still go? I understand it's very very cheap for a week. However the place isn't safe, management have told people to go away when you make complaints and they don't seem to ever be in trouble anywhere?

Watchdog have done reports, environmental health have carried out reports yet it still stands

Last year a ceiling collapsed on to people and injured 18 people at Brean sands and they are still thriving with bookings.

The whole place is really run down the accommodation is infested with bed bugs and mice it's really sad. They still have the green baths and sinks etc from the 70s.

I just don't understand how they are still operating? Every post I see from their Facebook groups are full of complaints and people walking away. I find it bizarrely fascinating to read.

When we last went in 2009 a manager we spoke to said they was being left to be run in to the ground so they could say it doesn't work anymore, knock them down and place hotels there.

I know people take the mick out of Butlins but I feel they really do provide a nice British seaside holiday experience and have fantastic entertainment, with Covid they have made a festival type outdoor entertainment thing at the moment it looks great.

Pontins have rooms that haven't been cleaned in months full of mice droppings? And you still have to pay for electric and bedding. I just wondered if any one has ever worked for them or knows how they get away with treating customers like this? It's been years now and hasn't changed.

Having a good laugh reading the reviews.

Sorry but anyone going to Pontins expecting anything other than filth only have themselves to blame. It's renowned for being crap and always has been. Some of the reviewers being "beyond disgusted" need to have a think about what they were expecting for £100 for a week!!!

@SisterNight

I'm gutted reading all of this. We're due to go in 2 weeks time and it's all we can afford.

Which one are you going to ? To be fair when we went our apartment was clean even though it was small and basic The outside areas had seen better days and communal areas could have been cleaner.....

BUT .... my DS and his mate had a good time playing football with some other lads we met there , we went on the beach and had Tesco vouchers for the fair next door (Brean).

Make sure you've got coins for the electric . Some cleaning supplies and your own bed linen / towels . I took food with us as well eg pasta and sauce , tinned hotdogs etc easy to heat up and we just bought extra chips and ice cream out .

Hopefully you'll get some nice weather and have a good break At least you are forewarned and can make sure you've extra cleaning stuff with you .

@Manolin

These sound great places to take kids. If ever there is an incentive to work hard at school, strive for excellence and never accept failure as an option - this is it!

I'm sorry but I don't understand this post at all .

Is this another version of the work hard at school or you'll end up working in Tesco or McDonald's ? because I find that horrible snobbery . Everybody doesn't start with the same advantages.

I'm really hoping that this isn't what you meant as you don't sound a nice person .

We saw no anti social behaviour when we went . Admittedly we didn't stay long in the entertainment room but there was no loud arguments , drunkenness around the accommodation area .

@safariboot

I know it's classist to say this, but I reckon a big part of Pontins' customers are families who go because they know they can get away with anti-social behaviour. Getting pissed, being loud, having no problems getting in a fight, all stuff nicer places would chuck them out for.

Sounds like a description of the loutish behaviour of the Bullingdon club.

What's scary is people have written reviews to express their horror of finding poo on walls, dirty toilets, pubes, spat out chewing gum on beds, mouldy food left in the oven and complaining the chalets stink of urine but then STILL stay. Maybe if people didn't actually give them the business they would close for good.

https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2020-08-12/calls-for-pontins-in-camber-to-close-after-guest-finds-faeces-all-over-the-bathroom

From Itv today

Jesus look at the hand sanitizer pump

We went when I was 8months pregnant. Total nightmare.
I got stoned by a load of gypsy kids

My mum goes for the dance weekends. She takes a sleeping bag because she knows about the bed bugs. I went into her disabled appartment once it was like a crack den, but the weekend had been booked up months in advance as they had dance classes and workshops. It wasn't that cheap either.

@InFiveMins

Having a good laugh reading the reviews.

Sorry but anyone going to Pontins expecting anything other than filth only have themselves to blame. It's renowned for being crap and always has been. Some of the reviewers being "beyond disgusted" need to have a think about what they were expecting for £100 for a week!!!

Maybe not luxury accommodation but basic clean accommodation and facilities? Cheap doesn't equal unhygienic and zero standards. McDonald's is cheap, so would you expect them to have Low hygiene and health standards with their food and restaurants? Pointins is a health risk, how is it not shut down ?

Even if it was free it wouldn't be reasonable for there to be shit and blood on the walls and a dangerous sofa bed.

We went to Brean Sands about 10 years ago with our two young kids. Someone gave us a voucher and we thought it might be a laugh, though our expectations weren't high.

It was appalling from the moment we arrived in the lobby and were greeted by the stench of piss, a wet carpet and grim-faced staff marshalling people quite forcefully into large queues.

The "apartment" was terrifying. Filthy, tiny, broken window, mouldering linoleum. The oldest and smallest bath I have ever seen and a cracked and dirty basin.

Metal-framed camp beds with ancient yellowing 2-inch mattresses in the kids' room. We slept in the living-room which was also the kitchen - we had to move the (filthy, ancient formica) table to get the sofa-bed out, which sagged almost to the floor in the middle and reeked of urine, with our feet practically jammed up against the dirty stove all night.

There was NOTHING to do. A small pool with filthy changing facilities, no slide or activities of any kind. A sandpit with a dog turd in it. One grubby soft play area with a slide which occupied my kids for about 20 minutes. The evening "entertainment" was a kids' disco with a couple of disconsolate-looking blue-coats trying to get the kids to do "agadoo" over and over again, followed by an aggressively racist comedian.

The neighbours were a treat. When we arrived the guy next door was sitting on a plastic chair in his doorway, clad only in grubby white vest and pants, a can of beer on his lap, fast asleep with his head lolled over to one side. Clearly he needed his beauty sleep, so that he could spend the small hours (every night we were there) bellowing obscenities at his wife and kids and chucking things at the wall.

Thank fuck for the amusement park next door, it was nothing to write home about and cost us a fortune, but it cheered the kids up.

I've never been to an open prison, but I'd be surprised if it was as bad as Pontins.

@InFiveMins

Having a good laugh reading the reviews.

Sorry but anyone going to Pontins expecting anything other than filth only have themselves to blame. It's renowned for being crap and always has been. Some of the reviewers being "beyond disgusted" need to have a think about what they were expecting for £100 for a week!!!

For £100 a week I'd expect somewhere basic but clean. I've stayed at backpacker/YHA hostels for £15 a night and all of them were clean. Just because somewhere is cheap, doesn't mean they shouldn't hire a cleaner.

Who owns pontins? Someone must be responsible for all this.

I'm almost crying with laughter at some comments on here - "like a crack den"

Seriously just DONT GO - it's never entered my head to go because I have heard the horror stories for years. It's a total dive.

its sad to think how fantastic pontins was back in the 1970s when it was still owned by Fred Pontin. once he sold up the rot set in.
what i feel sorry about is the staff. in seaside places jobs are very scarce and things like holiday places are often the only choice albeit only for a number of months but better than nothing.
But having to go to a place like that or work on somewhere like reception and have the public constantly complaining it must sap your will to live. you must just get so immune to it and end up being rude as you cant take any more.
What do the cleaners get told to do? so many tripadvisor reviews say doors were sealed or had stickers on saying the chalets were in line with covid cleaning yet they were filthy. were the staff just told to stick stickers on the door regardless of cleaning or not?
what cleaning do they do? they say they see cleaners wheeling their trolleys about but its the same old complaints; filthy floors that dont look like they have been mopped or hoovered; dirty bathrooms esp showers etc; toilets unflushed no bleach in them etc.
the fittings are bad; lots complain about those awful 80s bed settees in faux leather to sleep on them is awful, the bedding is polyester and often dirty, mattress' and pillows are wafer thin often covered in blood excrement semen etc.
in the winter the chalets are cold and draughty well they were not really meant for winter holidays. they are just metal and concrete so not ideal.
though Butlins has now gone over to hotel style accommodation which prices itself out of the market for many, Pontins needs to really invest serious money perhaps knocking these down and even caravans would be better. there is potential there and if it was better accomodation and facilities then you probably attract better families and the rougher lot would go somewhere else.

When I started reading this thread I thought Pontins had static caravans. Now I’ve googled and they are all in rows of hell. I’ve never seen anything like it.

My DC stayed in a PGl with old pontins chalets and they said they could hear the conversations in the next room, so they can’t be sound proof.

That’s not really accommodation is it. It’s shocking.

I’m feeling the need for someone like Stacey Dolan to do an undercover documentary in the life of a cleaner at Pontins.

I’m sure Pontins is where a friend of mine stays. She’s a nurse and very clean so I don’t understand why she goes, but the photos on trip advisor have reminded me of her Facebook Holiday photos.

Is that mould near the hand sanitiser pump?! The whole place needs condemning. How can it be so terrible when other similar places manage to be clean? Surely when someone leaves a chalet the cleaners come and clean it as per their cleaning policies. Replace loo rolls and swap bedding over. Broken or worn out items are reported and replaced. And so on and so on. How is this just not happening?

draughty I suppose you're not wrong.

According to this thread, you have to queue up when you arrive to get given the bedding and duvets. 🤯

@DobbyTheHouseElk even worse, having looked at the website (couldn’t resist after reading this thread) you have to PAY for the bedding (or bring your own!!!!)

I don’t understand! Isn’t bedding part of accommodation?

Apparently environmental health are going in the camber sands one today or tomorrow to take a look. I don't know how true it is though