I have just returned from a family holiday to Fuerteventura that I booked with Thomson Holidays, bronzed, fatter and quite tired after a fun filled time with my wife and three young kids.
The flight over with the youngsters was hard work though, and it was not at all helped by the fact that the French air traffic controllers were on strike and we had to go north to go south; adding an extra hour onto the journey.
Yet all was well when we landed, the sun was blazing, the kids were tired and I had pre-booked, through Thomson, a large 7 seat family car with a big boot to be waiting for us at the airport for the five of us and our heap of luggage. – At least that is what I assumed.
In the arrivals terminal of Fuerteventura, I hunted down the Thomson rep and asked where the Europcar desk was. It was explained to me that Europcar didn’t actually have a desk but worked from a black van in the multi-storey car park out front. I explained this to the missus and went off to find it.
The van was staffed by a polite young lady who upon receipt of my paperwork went on to explain that they didn’t have a large family car available have never had one and they cannot understand why it had been booked from there. So would I be interested in an Astra or something?
As you can imagine I was not too happy with this as I had been assured by Thomson that a 7 seat vehicle or similar would be there for us as there was five of us and 6 large cases.
We were royally stuffed!
I went in search of the Thomson Rep who pointed me at the rep in charge of the airport and who’s name may have been Amie (not too sure here as I was livid) and I explained my predicament.
‘Oooh’ she laughed to her rep friends, ‘ You are having a bad day aren’t you,’ I went on to explain my situation and she just laughed again, then told me that I needed to speak to Europcar as they needed to sort it out.
How not very helpful!
‘IT’S NOT FUNNY!’ I barked before storming off, just barley holding back the tirade of verbal abuse that I really wanted to unleash upon her. ( but I know better)
So I stormed back to the poor Europcar rep who had by now been on the phone and had managed to arrange a replacement car (not as big but we would have to do) The only problem was that it wouldn’t be available until 5pm that evening.
I had a bit of a fit.
The end result was that they kindly agreed to front a minibus to take us to our hotel and deliver the car to us later on.
We missed a day with the car and they agreed to refund a chunk of cash for that. I was given a Spanish telephone number to ring when I got back. Marvelous!
I have since popped into First Choice (Thomson) and complained. I have been told to put it in writing, which I always suspect is a way of hoping that I won’t be bothered to do so.
Little do they know me…