Oliver's Travels

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Anyone booked a Villa via a company called Oliver's Travel's? How was it?

Hi
We have just got back from one
Villa was lovely. We also randomly got sent a dock and bay towel before we went.
When we paid we then got the villa details and it had a different name and then we found it on all different booking sites for slightly cheaper. But there wasn’t much in it.
They are just a front end for lots of villa rental companies. All our contact about getting keys and when we were there was from the company that actually rent out the villa.
If I liked one I would do a reverse google image search and see if I could find it cheaper.

We've just had a horrible experience with Oliver's Travels. We had an anniversary trip booked since Feb to go to Lisbon and, 2 weeks before leaving, they emailed to say they had to cancel our apartment as the owner had sold it! They offered us one apartment far away from the central location we'd booked and had based all our plans around (including researching and booking 3 nearby restaurants). It was extremely stressful, very time consuming to try to find an alternative (very few options available or affordable), which was not in the area we'd chosen, a hotel rather than an apartment, and cost us a lot more.

They took no responsibility for the situation and apparently their contracts with their property owners include no consequences for cancelling at short notice. We asked for some fair compensation but they were slow to reply on some occasions and ultimately offered nothing except an apology.
We part-paid with some credit that had been gifted to us which they have refunded, but we wouldn't risk going with them again. Even if we did use the credit, you can only use it for up to 50% of the cost so they stand to win on all fronts and the customer takes all the hit. They are not ATOL protected which apparently only applies to package holidays.
They are essentially just an agent, adding on a significant fee for otherwise cheaper properties I think. When things go wrong on their side, they don't seem to care about customer satisfaction or their reputation. I'd give them a very wide berth!

@Colourcoded
Unfortunately, that can happen with any agency who is booking out accommodation which is privately owned, so the same apartment may also have been marketed through Booking or Vrbo and it would still have been cancelled last minute. They would simply refund all costs paid. I can see that your situation was made complicated by your credit note, but that's unusual.

And it is annoying, I agree. We had similar happen to us with an apartment we had booked for Mallorca a couple of years ago, it was managed by an agency in Mallorca and we booked through Vrbo. The managing agent offered us another property at the same price but it was in a different resort so we ended up with a refund and having to pay a lot more than our original accommodation to get something in the resort we wanted at short notice. But I can't see that Vrbo could be faulted with this and have used them again.

@ShinyAppleDreamingOfTheSea
I'm really passionate about good customer service and think it's what makes the difference between a brand and a really good brand that values its reputation, its customers and wants them to return. I suspect the cost to Oliver's Travels of offering a modest amount of compensation would have been far less than the cost of business lost through word of mouth and lots of time spent going to and fro about the situation.
I would expect any good agent to have a contract in place with its suppliers where there would be some consequence for them (eg some form of compensation to the customer) in the event of such a short notice cancellation. In this case, the property owner would obviously have known well in advance of 2 weeks that they were selling the property.
Although it wasn't directly the company's fault, I feel that they should take responsibility and it just makes good business sense to leave your customers feeling good about their experience, even when things go wrong. Ultimately, it's their reputation at stake. You sound much more tolerant than me! 😄