Virgin Holidays, www.virginholidays.co.uk Review

Overall Rating

Flight crews on both Virgin Atlantic flights were wonderful and couldn't do enough for you.

Virgin made several administrative errors in the time leading up to our departure date. Customers service were always very difficult to get through to, and generally of little use.

We have recently returned from a trip to Orlando, Florida and this is the first time we have used Virgin Holidays. It will be the last!

We originally booked an Executive house, but in the months following making the booking, we read on a website that the development we were going to, no longer supplied Executive houses. We were also a little nervous as we had read negative reviews regarding our accommodation. I telephoned and emailed Virgin to check this information, and got very weak responses. They even said that we should ignore the reviews as, "you don't know who is writing the reviews, or what their motives are for writing them!"

When we arrived at our house on Highlands Reserve, all of our fears were confirmed. The house smelt absolutely dreadful, it was dirty, grubby, quite obviously very tired and shabby. The bedding was stained, stains on carpets, damaged walls, damaged lampshades and as for the pool .... well the blue protective cover was so old and sun damaged that there were blue pieces of plastic in the water. One of our girls stood on the first step of the pool and stepped out covered in blue bits. Even the front door had a damaged lock and the patio doors did not lock properly.

We went to see the Virgin Rep the very next morning, to ask to be moved into the house we had paid for. He came out with numerous pathetic excuses, and then contacted the cleaning company. They changed the bedding for slightly better bedding, but quite honestly, there was little else they could do to improve things! I won't bore you with the lengthy details, but we spent 3 days battling to be moved. Only after I rang the UK Virgin Office and also informed the local Virgin Rep that we would be instructing our Solicitors that very day, were we given a new house.

We are so disgusted and ashamed that a British company would treat its customers this way. We felt as though we had just been put in the most appalling quality accommodation, and should just accept it. And the worst of it was, we were not alone. EVERY time we went into the Virgin office, there was another British family complaining about the same poor quality/cleanliness of their houses.

This holiday was shocking, shocking, shocking!! I took photos to prove it as I never want to forget what a Virgin holiday is like.