Barrhead Travel - www.barrheadtravel.co.uk

We had a brilliant holiday. Alaskan Cruise, Rocky Mountaineer and the Calgary Stampede. Paperwork arrived on time and a courtesy call a couple of days before we left to ensure that we had applied for visas.

Was a little concerned due to some of the comments that I had read because it was our 55 Wedding Anniversary whilst we were away and had been planning this trip for years. Everything went like clockwork and we were impressed with how organised everything was. The agent we dealt with had obviously informed hotels etc because we were upgraded several times and even had a bottle of bubbly waiting in our room in Banff.

We came home jet lagged but with fantastic memories.

After a cancelled flight and getting nowhere with the airline concerned I asked our travel agents - Barrhead Travel to help. They simply kept referring me back to the airlines. They hide behind Data Protection but they don't really understand what the rules are, but are good at quoting bits from them. The Chief Executive is too busy to respond to a personally addressed letter of complaint, this is after numerous communications between myself and their customer service department. Final letter from them, again from a member of the customer service team equally badly written and not addressing the issues. Appalling. We travel a lot both on our own and with friends. When we travel with friends they always use Barrhead to make our bookings. Never again, they give no service other than to make the booking.

Barrhead Travel is supposed to be a British company but it acts as a mouthpiece for Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands. Its newspaper advert on 30th March 2019 for the 'Highlights of South America' cruise on the Zaandam says one of its ports of call is "Stanley, Islas Malvinas".

Disgraceful.

pls avoid as you will be disappointed with your holiday as we were.

I think it is best that I start from the very beginning informing you when I first arranged the holiday. At the time I was working at the Cameron Toll centre and I walked past your advertisement to Naples for 5 nights B&B and free trip to Pompeii from the 4th Oct returning 9th Oct staying at Hotel Tiempo for £369pp. I booked this trip for myself and partner and 2 friends. As I was on my lunch break and after everything was arranged, I asked the girl who served me to drop the paperwork off at my work which she said was OK. The colleague did drop the paperwork off however, this did not include the Pompeii trip as advertised but instead a 24hr Bus tour and I was not informed of this change at the time of booking. I then went back to see the colleague to discuss this and she informed me that there were no spaces left and she couldn't get it booked. A manager got involved and arranged this for me but this meant I had to pay and extra £15 per person which I believe was unfair but I paid it anyway as we really wanted to go to Pompeii. I have attached both the advertisement on the window and the paperwork that I received, confirming the booking.

So as you can see it wasn't a good start already not being informed of changes and myself paying extra for a trip that was available for the time I was going away.

I moved house during the summer and branch which resulted in my closest branch being the Gyle Shopping Centre, so I had arranged for the paperwork to be transferred to there. I received the paperwork the Saturday before we left on holiday which was great but no phone call to inform me that it was ready to be picked up. On Saturday we researched the reviews for Hotel Tiempo and these weren't great at all... I wasn't expecting much from a 4 star Hotel as advertised on your window compared to 5 star hotel in terms on cleanliness, facilities etc however, many of the reviews stated that gangs and prostitutes were hanging around outside the hotel which we were not comfortable with. I then went to Gyle centre branch the next day (Sunday) to see if we could change hotel, which after 2 hours of looking at different hotels we decided on the Central B&B hotel as this more central and we wanted to stay close to the train station. I also discussed the Pompeii trip as this states this did not include the admission fee which I was not informed again when I booked, so all that was given to me was a trip that included transport and a tour guide but no entrance fee. When arranging trips through a travel agent, you expect this to be included in the price but this was resolved partly that I would have to buy the tickets myself when there and will be refunded when I get back. I agreed to this but again was not expected to do this and I had to pay extra for the hotel, £60, to stay there and the girl who did this for me said that I can go and she will email me the paperwork for the hotel as I was waiting a long time for her to arrange this. I called on Monday to ask about a bill I received and I was told that was an error and I asked for the email confirmation of the hotel which I was informed that she would do it that evening. Wednesday came and again no paperwork was sent to me, and I then had to go back into the branch at the Gyle to collect the paperwork (attachment for this is also included on this email).

When arriving in Naples after 9pm due to half hour delay, we got a taxi to go to the hotel, once arriving at our location it did not look safe at night and no signage informing us/any guest on how to enter the building and we were left on the street with our luggage with nowhere to go. There were buzzers for the B&B but no one was answering, another person was entering the building while we were waiting and we managed to get inside the building. The B&B was on the 5th floor - not ideal for carrying luggage up - we rang the bell and buzzer and still no one answered. This looked more like a hostel than a hotel. With no choice but to start enquiring at other hotels in the area and see if they had availability that night, 3 hotels that we tried had no availability. Finally, we managed to get a room for the night but had to fork out and extra 70 Euros per couple (see attached receipt).

The next morning I was up at 7:30am Naples time, not getting a goodnight sleep as concerned about where we are staying the rest of the holiday, I went back to Central B&B thinking someone would be there for breakfast. Again, no one answered the buzzer or the front door. I went back again at 9am and again no one answered. After returning to the place were we stayed we left with our bags and decided to walk around to find breakfast and wait until Barrhead travel opened. So 10am Naples time, I called the Gyle centre branch and someone picked up from Hanover street I think who listened to me and arranged someone from the Cameron Toll branch to call me back. I got a quick response from Craig who was not a manger but the most experienced colleague there at the time where I explained everything from the start to where I am now. He informed me he is going to look into this and call me back. I am not sure of times exactly and got a call to inform me that the room that I booked was no longer available as they gave this up as I did not check in the previous day. The person I dealt with also asked me if anyone informed me that I was to call and arrange check in times beforehand. I informed him no one told me to do this and tried to keep calm as my main concern was to get a place to stay. He then tried to get this arranged for me, a few hours had passed and still no response. I called back to only find out that he was serving customers and quite frankly not taking my situation seriously and more interested making the next sale. I was getting very annoyed and stressed as it was now around 4/5pm Naples time and a long time waiting to hear a response and still nowhere to stay. I received a call from the person I dealt with informing me he had found another Hotel called Kleopatra which was not central at all and 3 star hotel with not so good recent reviews which I was not happy to stay there and was miles away from the city centre. Eventually a hotel was located - Hotel Ramada which was in a similar location to Central B&B which we agreed. Now the hotel was nice and could not complain about the hotel. However I could not believe this had taken 8 hours to arrange and I could not believe I was offerd a location that was so far away. I cannot explain the amount of stress I was feeling that day as this was a holiday I suggested to my partner and friends only to find out the first couple of days has been terrible.

On the Saturday evening, I was looking out the paperwork for the Pompeii trip that was organised the following day to find out where to go to get picked up. After looking at the voucher, the date for the Pompeii trip was booked on the Saturday and not the Sunday. When booking this trip, I had arranged with colleagues at Cameron Toll and double checked with staff at the Gyle that the trip was booked for the Sunday. I then called the Cameron Toll branch and I spoke to the manger there who knew about the situation I have been a part of. She did some digging for me as she thought this was an open ticket. When I got a call back from her only to be disappointed that the ticket was not a open ticket and it had to be arranged. Again I felt this was a blame game with the staff at Cameron Toll, blaming me that I didn't check the ticket when I got them and there is nothing that she could do. I got upset and I did take ownership of not checking the tickets before I left or when I got them but I also informed the manager that there must be a protocol at the branch when handing the customers travel documents that you must sit down with them and cover everything which did not happen in my case.

As I was just handed an envelope with the documents at the Gyle branch and no discussion happened about my travel docs. The manager had no response to give me as I informed her of my thoughts about booking holidays through a travel agent is your job to make my travel arrangements for me not myself and why should I be checking docs over and over again when I was told several times when the trip was booked in branch and not over the phone. I always attended the branch with my partner to ensure everything that we wanted was getting done and she confirms that we were both told when the trip was booked and no information was given to us about the admission fee or hotels. Again this did not make me look great to my friends as I planned everything so we all ended up getting a train to Pompeii costing 2.80 euro each way per person and when arriving had to pay for the tour costing a 12 Euros each (receipts attached).

The last day was also not a great day considering we had to pay a tax fee 28 euro per couple leaving the hotel. Again this was not mentioned to me over the phone when this was arranged and again this was another inconvenience to me and my friends that we had to pay. On the original paperwork it did state that Hotel and room taxes are included but then goes on to say Resort fees and city taxes are all payable locally. This is unclear if I had to pay taxes or not, but guessing I did not stay in a resort and it was a tax for hotel this should've been included and not something I had to pay (paperwork is also included on this email).

I hope this will be taken seriously on the impact this has had on myself, partner and friends holiday spending more or less a whole day waiting to hear where we are going to stay. No one seems to be taking ownership, when speaking to Cameron toll and Gyle I was getting the blame passed on from each other and frankly not very much liking how this was getting turned on myself and how this was my fault as mentioned from the manager at the Cameron toll branch. After spending a good chunk of Euros that myself and friends hadn't planned on spending we had to turn to our bank cards to withdraw more money and use cards abroad paying, resulting in even more charges!

This cruise was poor value, very badly arranged. A complete shambles. Once again Barrhead have let us down.

In answer to your message requiring our comments on our last cruise, booking ref CFJZHTO French River Cruise on Fd.Olsen ‘Braemar’ we found Barrhead were the perfect travel agents. All paperwork arrived on time, nothing was forgotten and we had no worries. The cruise was fantastic. The ship was perfect. Lovely food, excellent shows, our cabin very roomy and the staff so polite and caring. The weather was perfect. Our excursion from Rouen to Scenic Normandy along both sides of The Seine was gorgeous, the excursion from Lorient out to Concarneau was equally as lovely. The excursion out to a vineyard from Bordeaux was a bit disappointing. A long trip, no visit to the vineyard’s chateaux and very small tasters of the wine. The Captain said he had never seen The Bay of Biscay so smooth. Just a ripple. We would love to go again but Olsen’s aren’t doing it next year. We are still looking for something as it is our Golden Wedding next August so we will be in touch with Barrheads if we come up with something.

Thank you Barrheads for everything. Always good to us.

My parents are coming to visit me in NY. They booked to JFK and Barrhead decided to give them a flight to Newark with out telling them until they received the tickets. When they phoned to discuss it with them the reply from Barrhead was that Newark isn't very far from JFK and its only a little taxi ride.....basically they didn't want to know about it. My Dads 88 and I live on Long Island so its going to be another 2 hrs in a taxi for them......unbelievable.

My experience of Barrhead Travel was really good as staff were knowledgable and gave me exactly what my wishes were regarding my holiday. I asked for a good hotel with a balcony and sea view, that was exactly what I got. The hotel choice was excellent, all came up to my expectations. The booking could not have been easier. The only thing not mentioned was how hilly it is in Madiera if you had a partner or other member of the family with problems with their mobility it could be a bit of a struggle. Thankfully this did not affect myself or my partner. Although transport was always available, I like to walk a lot not to miss some of the sites and experiences and to get a good feeling of the culture, restaurants, shopping experience.

Staff knew their job and every item worked flights / transport / hotel/ holiday. Union Square Aberdeen kept us fully informed. Very pleased.

I was very happy with the service I had at Barhead Travel and would use them again