Report Abuse

“Good holiday but bad money grabbing Travel Agent!”

written by ujMorales128 on 21/05/2017

First of all... UK number but Indian call centre. Agents all give themselves British names. Although the agents speak ok English, there are communication issues making phone conversations very difficult. Some things are simply lost in translation!

The deals advertised online are never available when you call up! They tell you that the hotel is not available... flight not available.... rates have gone up now etc etc and then they sell you something more expensive of course! But then days later you find the same deal re-advertised again (with same price, dates, flights, hotel etc that you had requested!)

Very pushy sales people who will call continuously even when you ask them not to! After every call (even a complaint one) they ask you to do a Customer Satisfaction survey. When you hang up before the survey they keep calling and calling non stop! They don't take the hint!!

My main complaint.... they try to up sell things that you don't need! Ok fair enough i understand that its a sales job and that's what they are supposed to do! But charging £40 per customer to check you in online is ridiculous!! Anyone can check themselves in for a flight!! Asked if i wanted to pay an extra £200 for an upgraded sea view room - which i agreed to. Told me it was a special offer and the £200 was heavily discounted, usually it would be a lot more. When my travel invoice and booking details came through I could clearly see that they hadn't upgraded our room at all - it was a Double Superior Room with sea view NOT guaranteed - which was the exact room type that i was originally quoted for in my email quotation! They had taken an extra £200 from me for nothing!! Called up to demand my money back and was basically lied to, i was told "Yes mam this is an upgraded room.... this hotel issues no refunds... you were originally quoted for a Standard Double Room, I'm looking at your quotation right now".... They didn't know that I had received the quote by email so could therefore prove what I was saying!!! That is the only reason I ended up getting my money back. They never even offered to ACTUALLY upgrade my room, just refunded the £200 when they realised they had been caught out and didn't have a leg to stand on.

I understand that this is a Sales job and adding on extras to increase their margins is what its all about, but I do object to being lied to and sold non existent room upgrades! Very bad. I would not recommend Secret Escapes Travel to anyone, they are difficult to deal with and basically try to rip you off!!