Complaint Letter

Dear Lastminute.com

I wish to complaint about my recent holiday to Rhodes as booked through your web site (I reported my complaints to the local rep on 8.10.7). I wanted a quiet, warm, stress free holiday to recover from an operation I’ve just had. I wasn’t after much, a nice room, some nice food, a swimming pool and a gym to help regain my fitness.

I paid 600 pounds for this holiday and I don’t feel I got my moneys worth by a long stretch, In fact I feel I have been miss-sold too. The holiday was advertised as a ‘dreamlike Deluxe 5 star hotel’ however the room was very basic needed and multiple maintenance work was needed to be done on it, in the first case just to make the room safe.

The holiday was rated as 5 stars and this definitely wasn’t. You do point out on some of your other holidays that standards are a bit different in some countries, but that is clearly stated in the advert and was not in this case. I don’t expect any 5 star accommodation include two single beds, of slightly different heights, push together to make a double when the room is clearly designed for a double bed (the double bed head board was nailed to the wall). Supplied in the room was a single hand towel and a single medium sized towel (not even bath towel size), 2 rolls of toilet paper and nothing else. Nothing to make it a 5 star experience at all not even a bar of soap. When advertising a 5 star experience you think of such things as mini bar, a kettle for tea making, a range of TV and radio channels, furniture that isn’t worn and shabby, a room which doesn’t need things fixing and perhaps even some toiletries.

Where I would agree the all-inclusive part of the package was good, the main lobby and the swimming pools were fine; but practically nothing else was of even a moderate standard. The Fitness Centre and Sauna was a shabby little basement room with a nearly unusable multi-gym and no sign of the sauna at all. The advertised Scuba diving lessons and hire were non-existent.

The room was in such bad repair, ignoring the minor faults, I had to call out maintenance 4 times. First time was to fix the high cupboard door that was dangerously hanging off making entering the room unsafe. Then it was twice to try and make the hot water work. Finally once more to repair the patio door which fell off its hinges.

Room facilities were not as advertised or perhaps only the barest minimum to cover the legal definition. The ‘Satellite TV with international channels/ music radio’ was 1 English TV channel only, BBC World, and that was only after I had retuned the TV to get it. No radio channels that I could find.

You advert specifically lists what is not included in the holiday and you didn’t mention that the In-flight meals were not included as you do on some of your other holidays – on the way out as I wasn’t warned and so I was pretty hungry after 14 hour journey there. And on the way home, 9 hours stuck with Thomas Cook only a single drink and sandwich at the airport and nothing on the plane during the appalling journey home.

All these problems left me much more stressed and tired than before I left and I now feel I would not want to wish your organisation on my worst enemy.