Stupidly booked a short break to Bruges via Short-Breaks.com. Thought it was a good deal but afterwards rechecked the costings and it worked out nearly £100 more than if I had put the package together myself. The Eurostar services were fine although no table was allocated despite requesting one. The hotel on the other hand was appalling. It was supposed to be a 4* property, never on your life as it was tired, run down and the receptionist didn't even say hello on arrival where we just stood and waited for 5 mins whilst he was on the phone. There were very few staff on duty and because it was a bank holiday there were no technicians available to sort out the problems which were: No Air Conditioning, No telephone, Water temperature fluctuating but never a constant temperature and the mini bar fridge door was hanging off its hinges. I had a terrible night's sleep on the first night but I complained and then we were moved but the room was still very hot. I asked Short-Breaks to intervene and resolve the issue with the hotel but they were utterly useless, took forever to get any feedback and thus no resolution has been reached so I will be complaining to ABTA and to Golden Tulip Hotels. Never again will I book with them as they clearly don't care about customer service.

I booked a weekend to Paris with short breaks. The company did not provide me with the correct travel information (apparently I was meant to check this and know this when I never knew I needed certain information!) when contacting them they took far too long to respond and they did not even issue an apology for the massive disruption they caused to my break before travel and during the break. Never known a company with such poor customer care!

We booked a trip to Paris which included Eurostar, 3* hotel and a trip on the river. The hotel was dirty. Health and safety hazards, open wires on light switch. Mouldy bathroom. No tea, coffee, sugar or milk. Dirty bedding. Noisy outside and smell of kitchens. Aggressive and inconsiderate manager. We stayed 1 night although we were booked for 2. We could not stay in this hotel. We complained to Short breaks on our return and were shocked by their lack of care. We sent photographs of the hotel and the obvious neglect in the rooms. Short breaks didn't want to know basically. They blamed the hotel and our lack of evidence. They told us that the hotel prided themselves on good customer service and guest satisfaction??? We moved rooms and the second room was worse than the first. Surely good customer service means you check with the customer when they have changed rooms, asking if everything is ok? No they didn't. Short breaks then changed their mind and said a 'typical 3* hotel in Paris is what we stayed in' This was our belated honeymoon!! Our advice is PLEASE book with a reputable travel agency as Short breaks don't really care once they have your money.

*short breaks* did not do fair business. they advertised all hotels of disneyland always even if the hotels were all fully booked. this is unethical and should be made illegal. i consider myself v smart but i fell in their trap and regret it. disneyland authentic website showed most hotels full but since short breaks had those hotels as vacant, i paid online for a hotel of my choice. i felt v cheated few hours later when quite cunningly short breaks called me to say that they do not have rooms left in that or others, but in a more expensive hotel. hello????? and when i asked them for their refund policy, the lady put me on hold and after a while said that she will let me know later. she was well trained. she wanted to wind me up. she knew how to trap customer. i felt i had no option but to pay £150 extra - being forced. this seems v unfair and illegal. when i asked agent that i wanted refund, she said, u paid and so no refund and no change of mind.

The holiday itself seemed to be organised well, but they seemed to have little knowledge of the services of the transfer company at the destination, and when it went wrong, ie we were given no time of pick-up on departure day, and were left at the Hotel wasting the last one & a half hours waiting on a coach they never arrived! We finally had to resort to an expensive taxi to get us to the airport and we are still trying to claim this money back! When I pointed out to Short Breaks that our contract was with them and therefore they should be paying our refund, I was told that if it went through Head Office it would take 30 days to deal with, and then a further wait whilst the matter was investigated. I have never heard anything so ridiculous! I am still awaiting my refund, but this seems like a company who doesn't want to take responsibility for providing an efficient service. I shall be referring this matter further.

I used Short Breaks for 4 years in a row to book a few days at Disneyland Paris. They were good the first few times despite charging us slightly higher than the agreed price on one occasion (albeit only a few pounds). That was until this year. We booked a special service called Disney Express, whereby you take your luggage to to a special part of the Disneyland station, and you can then go straight into the park and your luggage appears at the hotel later on. They didn't book it with Disneyland, so despite paying for it, we had to take our luggage straight to the Hotel, wait for the park passes (with Disney Express you are given the passes on the train), so it took 2 hours longer to get into the park!! Try explaining that to your 5-year old daughter that we can't go straight in like every time before. Their excuse was that we had booked it far in advance so it had sat on somebody's desk for 6 months and they forgot about it. Their offer to help - 10% off a further break booked with them. I mean how stupid do they think we are. A case of they messed up but please use us again anyway. No chance. They lost a loyal customer. And the fact they have a policy where they will respond to queries/complaints within 28 days is a joke. I tried even getting the Managing Director's email address which they didn't want to give - although it doesn't take Poirot to figure out that once you know his name, the email format is generally the same for all staff. I must admit that his response was much more personable, but the end offer was pretty much the same. A great shame because the staff are polite on the phone, but the company doesn't seem to take it's service issues further than the minimum.

In 2010, my wife and I booked a three-day break in Bruges with ShortBreaks. We liked the idea of travelling by train and the hotel seemed very good.We payed £600 in advance.

But, 3 weeks before the holiday, we rang, twice, to change the dates of the holiday as the long-term weather forecast was for heavy snow. We were re-assured by staff that this would be fine , though we accepted that an admin fee would be involved.

We were shocked when, in January 2011, we rang to confirm new dates for our break, and they stated that they would charge us £150 "no-show" charge for not arriving at the Bruges hotel! Yet they had known we were changing the dates well beforehand.

They have stuck grimly to this attitude and we have now lost our £150, having recovered the rest from them.

As we are both part-retired, and conveniently placed for short breaks by rail on the continent, we are just the sort of customers that ShortBreaks Ltd would like to have. Their attitude was, therefore, very surprising.