any TRAVEL AGENTS out there? help! am doing battle with CRYSTAL HOLIDAYS!

[noonar]

Hi

i posted elsewhere that we were going to have to cancel ourskiing hol due to financial difficulties. tiredemma kindly suggested that we might be able to transfer our deposit to a new holiday later in the season.

to cut a long story short, after hours of searching their website, we found the perfect easter hol at a total of £1359. great!....except...crystal will only sell US that holiday for £1884. they say that we are only entitled to buy this holiday at the price it was on sale for when we originally booked, back in april, and not at the current price. this price difference wipes out our £480 deposit! (iyswim)

iunderstand that we have to pay an admin fee, and won;t get the internet discount, but this still makes the holiday alot more exp than anyone else would pay for it!

have spent 1.5hr on the phone arguing, holding etc etc. they wont budge. can they do this???

our deadline for paying the balance is today [angry}

noonar- i would contact trading standards as you have already suggested.

Dont forget also- Crystal is part of TUI group which also owns Thomson holidays- so I cant see why they wouldnt be able to 'transfer' the holiay onto another group within their organisation

Mrlsg, my deadline has passed so i have effectively cancelled

mrsghoul, thanks, i may try for a last minute later in the season...you may be right- there could be lots to choose from.

tiredemma, spoke to trading standards, and they said that crystal dont have to offer to transfer the deposit at all, so legally no grounds for complaint...HOWEVER... i had not realised about the 2 tier pricing when i spoke to them.

have redrafted my letter to crystal and photocopied pages from my april edition of their brochure along with the printout of the holiday i just tried to book. from this they can see that the holiday price has stayed the same. it is, however, less than the crystal family brochure price that they want me to pay.

in case anyone is interested in the small print...what crystal do in their family brochure is routinely offer 2 free child places per holiday (yipee!) but at the same time inflate the adult price by approx £200 ppn, which effectively wipes out the 'free' place. there is a total lack of transparency in their pricing.

sent my letter recorded delivery. have given them 7 days to reply...have asked for a refund on the grounds that they have obstructed my attempts to transfer my deposit and have given me false info (ie they told me i could CHOOSE a new holiday- but then dictated which brochure the holiday had to come from, just so they could demand more money.)

Crystal are renowned for there "standing their ground" attitude whicj has lost and will continue to loose them customers, I have worked in the ski industry for years both at the sales point and in resort and one for Crystal / Thompson

I now have my own ski business in Meribel and working in the industry for the big operators means that we offer more flexibility and a personal approach.

Good luck with your fight against Crystal, more people need to stand up to them and other larger operators

thanks polester. will let you know how my letter is received...perhaps i shouldnt hold my breath. i am very interested to know about your ski business, but suspect your holidays might be out of our price range

Hi noonar, I just thought that you woul dlike to know that you're not on your own in your battles with Crystal. I booked our holiday with them through Thomson travel agents in January to travel to Lapland in December for a santa trip with Skiing. There are 8 of us going including children but because of the family dynamics we booked an apartment that would sleep up to 10.
The travel agent phoned on Tuesday to say there had been an error in there systems and they couldn't give us the 2-10 apartment but would give us 2-8 apartment in same complex. She said it was good because they would give us £110 commpensation. I was furious and said that it wasn't good enough - we'd paid our money and they broke contract so wanted more compensation and the difference in price refunded. I also contacted trading standards who told me that I was entitled to this.
IT has now taken me 3 long days to get them to agree that they will give me a refund of £360 but they will only give us £50 compensation (£10 per adult).
I think that it is disgraceful that the travel companies are allowed to do this and get away with it. You made a change and they take away your deposit, they make a massive change and say whoops - here's £10 each.
I have now accepted the £410 as there was nothing else I could do, you can't tell 3 small children we're not going to see santa because the travel company are rubbish. I have however sent a letter of complaint to the travel agents requesting compensation for the 2 days it has taken me to get back what I was entitled to while they sat back and said there was nothing they could do, makes you wonder what the benefit of booking through an agent is!!

Just to chip in that last year I was extremely fed up with Crystal Finest - I specifically booked a ski trip with flights to Chambery rather than Lyon becuase of ther transfer times. Two days before the final balance was due I was informed the flights were changed to Lyon. It would have been too late at that point to get accommodation in the resprt were going at half term, so had no choice but to accept it. And needless to say the trnasfers were not only terrible becuase of the extra distance (on the busiest say of the year but their whole transfer process utterly dire - so neddless to say we just won't be booking again with them.

Not a help to you but i've just had dealings with First Choice. I told them that we were looking to cancel our NY break (too tired to go) and could they transfer our deposit for when we've chosen something else. They told me they couldn't do that but we just needed to make an amendment to our holiday and pay the £80 fee. We did this and they said that because we'd booked online previously we would have to book online again thereby keeping any online discount (as i'd thought they'd try and charge us full price). They were really good about it as our new holiday cost less than our NY one. I really hope you get something sorted and get some money back . You could try the amendment route although I know you're passed your 'day'?

they are bastards, arent they?

i got a reply today. they ignored all my points about their dual pricing policy.

but they stated that as as i never notified them in writing that i was cancelling, that we would now be liable to pay 50% of the total holiday cost (ie another £1000 plus, in order to cabcel!)as we are now within 8 weeks of departure.

i had assumed that our booking would 'expire' if balance was not paid on time. however, very bizarrely, they sent me a reminder invoice, dated AFTER our deadline, posted at the same time to our reply to the complaint.

dh and i really panicked and have arranged to transfer to the new holiday at the higher cost- rather than pay a massive cancellation charge.

it is unlikely that we will ever actaully go on this new holiday, but at least we can cancel it properly this time.

sorry. that was me just posting. am playing around with new nicknames