Saga

Never again with Saga

I booked a 28 day holiday with Saga at hotel Port Denia requesting a balcony room. On arrival I was given the key card to room 536, on entering I realised it wasn't a balcony room but a room overlooking dustbins. I went down to reception and explained that I had requested a balcony room, the receptionist showed me the booking form from Titan travel and said no request was made for a balcony room. He said I could have one next day if I paid him €270 which I agreed to. The next day I went to reception and paid €270 for the room upgrade to room 624. I also mentioned to the Saga on-site representative about this and he explained that it was only a request not a definite booking, I wasn't told this when I booked the holiday. 8 weeks before departure I received a email from Saga saying that some restoration work was been carried out on some of the balconies at the hotel but this would have no visual impact and assurance that we wouldn't have any disruption. On Thursday morning 29th February workmen started erecting scaffolding on the adjoining balcony and then with mechanical hammers they were removing concrete and bricks, the dust and noise were horrendous. I went to reception and asked to be given another room and was told no rooms were available. I then contacted the Saga rep who was most apologetic and went to see the hotel management. He told me that they said the work would stop the next day at 12 noon and they would give me €70 back for the upset. No work would be carried out over the weekend. On the Friday the work didn't stop at noon it went on until 4pm. On Saturday night at 9pm workmen were hammering and moving scaffolding around in the room next door so I rang reception and asked them to tell them to stop it didn't so I went and knocked on the door and a workman came and I asked him to stop the noise and they did. The next day I mentioned it to them, apologised and they said it would reported to head office. They did everything possible to sort out the problem but the hotel management didn't seem to bother. Since returning home 3 weeks ago I have emailed Saga customer services 3 times about the problem and had a automated reply saying I would be contacted within 48hrs to discuss the complaint. Nobody has contacted me, they obviously have had the £3509.16 that I paid them for the holiday and are not interested.

This time last year I went on a Saga tour to Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. They have since axed it but have several different tours to this part of the world.The local tour guide was excellent and made sure that everyone enjoyed their holiday. I really could not fault it and the price was OK. There is an age requirement in that you need to be at least fifty to book a Saga holiday. I would certainly book with them again.

My wife and I took a river cruise with Saga just recently. It was our first Saga holiday and we were extremely disappointed at the end of it. The cruise was not as good as was potrayed in the brochures! Except for the breakfast, the food and the wines were very average and the overall impression given was one of "corners being cut". The onboard entertainment was also sub-standard and amateurish!Saga's policy on river çruises is a bit misleading. Saga states that the cruises are " all inclusive " and that a "free bar is available and on board tips included". We relied on this informationat the time of booking. However in reality, this is untrue as we had to pay for these items in question! Overall, a big disappointment!

We've used Saga on several occasions but every time we've had trouble with their back office UK admin. For example paperwork has not arrived on time, tickets have been wrong (we were once told that wrong names on tickets did not matter!) and their service was generally slapdash. Once on the holiday, their reps. were fine and we always had a good time. But after terrible booking problems a couple of years back on a South American tour, experienced by most members of the party, we vowed we'd never travel with them again. Be careful!