Why do you punish your customers for supporting you?

Had a very bad experience recently on a special holiday to celebrate my 60th birthday. We traveled with Easy Jet from London Stansted to Dalaman, where we had the first leg of our holiday cruising round the coast of Marmaris. For the second half of our trip we boarded a ferry for a few days on Rhodes Island. We had a scheduled flight with Thomas Cook from Rhodes back to Stansted.

I did not realize that there was such a vast difference between the various airlines for cabin baggage allowance - in our case no weight restriction on the EASY JET flight but only 6 kg per bag on the Thomas Cook flight. The result was upon check-in for departure, we had a total between two cabin bags of 19 kg approx. - divided by two, 9+ kg for my husband's bag and 9 for my own.

The lady at the check-in desk also informed us that we were not allowed to have any extra accessories - we were therefore forced to put our handbags also into our cabin bags.

We were forced to repack so that we had approx only 6 kg in our one cabin bag and 13 in our other cabin bag. I was in tears because I had broken my hand on our trip and found it very difficult to do my packing. The 13 kg bag was then taken into the hold and was regarded as excess baggage. We had to pay 79 euros for this 13 kg of excess baggage.

I would have been perfectly satisfied to pay the excess, because I cannot blame Thomas Cook for my own ignorance for not checking their cabin baggage allowances.

HOWEVER, I feel unfairly treated and will not fly again with Thomas Cook because:

1. Why were we instructed to put our handbags into our cabin bags which added to our weight.
2. Why wasn't the the allowed 6 kg for our cabin bag not at least subtracted from our excess weight?
3. If I new that I could have an accessory - I could have used my beach bag to carry some of this excess weight as cabin weight. That would have made a huge difference in the overweight charge that we had to pay.
4. Why is there such a difference in baggage booked in advance and to go into hold and a bag put into hold at the airport. Isn't it normal for people to sometimes do some shopping on holiday and suddenly realizing on the airport that they are a few kg overweight? Why milk your customers at the end of a holiday like that, resulting in a awful stressful experience and a bad memory of what could have been a wonderful holiday? I do not get the point? Charge them for the overweight, but charge them reasonably/fairly - these people are your life blood after all??
5. I can understand that airlines have to be competitive, but why should they at least not have the same cabin baggage allowance? So may people are sometimes forced to make use of different airlines for outbound and return journeys.
6. Why does Thomas Cook only allow 6 kg of hand baggage per passenger - the LOWEST OF ALL AIRLINES - I took the time to do a bit of research!
7. Why did the check-in lady gave us the wrong information about accessories?

MY RESOLUTION: Thomas Cook is a stingy, unfriendly airline - they are only in it for the money and would not flinch in sucking the last few pennies out of your pocket! I AM NEVER GOING TO FLY WITH THEM AGAIN!

I have also learned a dear lesson: Always theck your baggage allowances when you use different airlines on one holiday.