On The Beach - anyone else used this awful travel agent?

[bookworm1982]

We've booked a 4k holiday with them in June and all was fine until we just looked at our booking as saw that they changed our flights to the day before! We're meant to be flying Saturday to Saturday as that's when our hotel is booked, but they've changed our flights to the Friday to Friday without consulting us or explaining why. The worst part is that they will not respond to any of my messages via Facebook (seems to be the only way to contact them), and I've been messaging them constantly for a week!

I'm so stressed and upset, I think we've been had by this company.

Anyone else had problems? And if so how can I contact them??

Anyone know who I could report them to? I have no idea where to start.

Thank you xxx

I thought the law changed a couple of years ago to make companies like OTB responsible in the same way as Jet2 are for the ‘package’ of services you buy , so flight, hotel, transfers

@WhenISnappedAndFarted

I've used them a handful of times and never had an issue.

Try contacting them through the My booking functionality.

I've done this, as soon as we spotted the change (which we spotted as we went in to make a dye payment). The message was submitted but with an automated reply saying "due to high volume" etc etc, so I don't hold out much hope that they'll reply, but I might be wrong.

Op

Have you been on the airline site itself

Confirm that the flight has indeed changed.
If changed, then all on the beach will do is apologise for not contacting you and say that you can be refunded.

If it hasn’t changed, then on the beach may have bumped you - unlikely.

We booked a holiday wit them just before Covid hit. I thought they were brilliant.

We got all our money back pretty much straight away when holidays were cancelled. Before they had received their money from the airlines.

I would definitely use them again

*For someone who knows how it works you are making a meal of it OP! How did you find out your flights had changed out of interest?

I'll ask again, have you used OTB's online messaging service?

Honestly, try not to panic. It'll get sorted!*

I'm making a meal out if it because I can't talk to anyone. Maybe it will be all sorted, but I'd like some reassurance from OTB. They respond to nothing. And yes I used that message tab at the very beginning when we first noticed the change (because we had a payment due) and no-one replied to our message. And no one is replying via Facebook either. Don't know any other way to contact them.

@DorothyZbornakIsAQueen

We booked a holiday wit them just before Covid hit. I thought they were brilliant.

We got all our money back pretty much straight away when holidays were cancelled. Before they had received their money from the airlines.

I would definitely use them again

This is reassuring xx

I have used them in past with no problems and have a holiday currently booked with them. Our flights have changed a couple of times (on same day) but both times we got an email. If I remember rightly the email was a bit ambiguous and didn’t actually say flight times had changed but when i went into my messages it had the notification of changes. I presume you have checked your messages on your account.

Also the changes were because the airline had changed the flight. Have you checked the flight is still on on the Saturday?

Also Tui once changed our booking to both another day and another hotel! With no real explanation. So it seems it’s across the board! We did get a full refund though.

NC incase anyone recognises this story. We booked a package holiday with them! It had an awful ending but not sure how much of it is their fault compared to the transfer companies fault.

Waiting for our shuttle bus transfer to the airport to get home and transfer was late. We start panicking. No number for the transfer company however was provided with an emergency contact number for OTB with our transfer times and managed to get through to them. Was repeatedly told that transfer was on it’s way. Rang back to be told transfer had arrived but we weren’t there. We definitely were! Turns out there was a hotel in the same area with a similar name. For example we were staying at ‘The Princess’ and the other one was ‘The Grand Princess’. Transfer went there.

Transfer eventually came (1.5 hours late!!) and by this point it was literally just a man in his car, transfer had been and gone to the airport. By the time we got to the airport they wouldn’t let us board, and we were stuck in the airport. At this point we didn’t care we just wanted to get back to the UK, we’d take a flight anywhere and make our own way home. Only one flight leaving that evening and tickets were ££££, next one to the UK was in three days as we were at a destination with a tiny airport. Rang OTB and they couldn’t help, actually hung up at one point! It was me and my DP and I was probably 20 at the time and very upset. My Mum was trying to get through to OTB from the UK and every time she explained who she was the phone ‘cut off’.

Luckily (or not) the transfer company knew we missed the plane and someone turned up and drove us to some horrible, dirty hotel way outside of the resort where we could literally see prostitutes bringing customers in, we had about 6 euros on us and she told us they would pick us up in the evening. There was nothing nearby for us to get cash or to get food and most of the staff were not English speaking so we had no way of communicating with anyone. We were in this hotel in the middle of nowhere for about 12 hours before someone came to pick us up and luckily we did get on the flight home which they paid for. Transfer company blame OTB for booking them to the wrong hotel. OTB blame transfer company. I wouldn’t book through them again though that whole experience was awful.

“On the Beach”? That’s what they’ve called their business?

That's what I thought! Doesn't fill you with confidence does it?!

@Verite1

I have used them in past with no problems and have a holiday currently booked with them. Our flights have changed a couple of times (on same day) but both times we got an email. If I remember rightly the email was a bit ambiguous and didn’t actually say flight times had changed but when i went into my messages it had the notification of changes. I presume you have checked your messages on your account.

Yep, definitely no messages.

I have used then before no problem. However Jet2 just cancelled our entire holiday with 6 weeks notice because they cancelled the flight. Impossible to contact them either

Call the airline…but it’s fair to say that the agent should be doing this ! That’s why people choose a holiday via a travel agent . I hope this problem gets sorted OP.

The problem is you booked the flights last June - schedules are never set in stone that far in advance and are very liable to change.

@used17837282

NC incase anyone recognises this story. We booked a package holiday with them! It had an awful ending but not sure how much of it is their fault compared to the transfer companies fault.

Waiting for our shuttle bus transfer to the airport to get home and transfer was late. We start panicking. No number for the transfer company however was provided with an emergency contact number for OTB with our transfer times and managed to get through to them. Was repeatedly told that transfer was on it’s way. Rang back to be told transfer had arrived but we weren’t there. We definitely were! Turns out there was a hotel in the same area with a similar name. For example we were staying at ‘The Princess’ and the other one was ‘The Grand Princess’. Transfer went there.

Transfer eventually came (1.5 hours late!!) and by this point it was literally just a man in his car, transfer had been and gone to the airport. By the time we got to the airport they wouldn’t let us board, and we were stuck in the airport. At this point we didn’t care we just wanted to get back to the UK, we’d take a flight anywhere and make our own way home. Only one flight leaving that evening and tickets were ££££, next one to the UK was in three days as we were at a destination with a tiny airport. Rang OTB and they couldn’t help, actually hung up at one point! It was me and my DP and I was probably 20 at the time and very upset. My Mum was trying to get through to OTB from the UK and every time she explained who she was the phone ‘cut off’.

Luckily (or not) the transfer company knew we missed the plane and someone turned up and drove us to some horrible, dirty hotel way outside of the resort where we could literally see prostitutes bringing customers in, we had about 6 euros on us and she told us they would pick us up in the evening. There was nothing nearby for us to get cash or to get food and most of the staff were not English speaking so we had no way of communicating with anyone. We were in this hotel in the middle of nowhere for about 12 hours before someone came to pick us up and luckily we did get on the flight home which they paid for. Transfer company blame OTB for booking them to the wrong hotel. OTB blame transfer company. I wouldn’t book through them again though that whole experience was awful.

Christ, how awful! Puts you off ever going on holiday again!

@Febrier

“On the Beach”? That’s what they’ve called their business?

That was my first thought too

They are awful. I had to do a chargeback to recover 2.5k from them during the height of the pandemic.

On the Beach is after a Chris Rea song surely? Think they used it in advert at some point.

You can’t talk to anyone in person and the messages are from bots. They are not actual messages that respond to your question. Just copy and paste stuff.

I've booked with them a few small holidays over the years and never had any massive issues (Morocco,Spain usually)
However
Last month we booked a big holiday to Dubai for September spent a good few thousand as it's our honeymoon holiday and treated ourselves
We've had some family members offer to upgrade the holiday for us as a present and we really wanted to extend our holiday another week
But on the beach are refusing to give us a quote to add another week on?! I don't understand what the problem is why they can't just give me a price
They keep saying they need to offer holidays to new customers first before they extend and adjust bookings that are already made? Finally they agreed to send me a quote but they said I have to wait a few weeks and they will email me a quote and to cancel the whole holiday I'll lose a lot of money
It's a nightmare won't be going with them again absolutely ridiculous
Hope you get sorted x

Have you been on the airline site itself?

**Confirm that the flight has indeed changed.
If changed, then all on the beach will do is apologise for not contacting you and say that you can be refunded. **

If it hasn’t changed, then on the beach may have bumped you - unlikely.

You’ll need to contact the airline. I had a holiday booked with them in 2019 and the flights were with Ryanair. I needed to amend the flights to add a case and OTB told me to contact Ryanair customer services, which I did and everything was sorted.
I’ve just looked at my booking and there was a separate reservation number for the flights - it’ll be that you need to use.

We've used them several times with no issues

I used them a number of times with no problems.

THEN I booked a holiday and after I paid they changed the hotel. It was nothing like I paid for and eventually they gave me a refund after a lot of hassle.

NEVER AGAIN

I work for a travel company and unfortunately there are a lot of flight changes happening at the moment. We notify customers in departure date order but that sometimes does mean that if they have logged into their booking for some other reason beforehand then they see the change in flight before we've been able to advise them.