May 14, 2019 12:13 AM
14216 Views
Long Story Short: They are unprofessional crooks. DO NOT USE THOMAS CROOK!
LONG STORY:
PART 1:
PRE TOUR BOOKING: I really wish I had read other reviews of TC before hiring them. It was shocking to see how many people were duped by this so-called'travel' company. We booked our Spain trip from USA(the trip was in May(6th to 11th) 2019 to 3 cities- Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona). We had arranged for this in Feb 2019. Calling them every night(day time in India) and them calling us back and being pressured into making a payment was more of a norm. They were fairly prompt until they received the payment. We had to arrange for visas ourselves. Once that was complete, about 2 weeks before the trip, they asked for a copy of our visa which we promptly sent them. We assumed that this was just standard procedure and did not question this. On April 27th we received a bombshell email saying that the trip was canceled due to low turnout(or something like that) and that we could go on a later date since our visas were valid for until 3 weeks after the trip! This is like your employer looking at your bank statement and saying that you don't need to be paid for this month since we have enough money anyway!
We had to book our own flights and would have had to cancel them and rebook(flights are typically non-refundable, ours definitely were). Regardless, of flight issues, this flagrant breach of contract is highly unprofessional. They were willing to take our money and not honor our commitment. (More about this part below during the tour about the other Guests). We spent the days before our trip calling them every night(day time in India) and staying on the phone until about 1-2 am since we could not resolve this issue. We had to submit a copy of our tickets/prices etc to'plead' our case. They tried to offer us some customized packages which would be of much less value. After a lot of heated conversations and pestering, they finally merged our tour with another one and were able to'honour' their initial dates and schedules. We spent the entire week prior to the tour in uncertainty due to this.
PART TWO:
TOUR: Our tour manager was Miss Alka. She was one of the bright spots in the tour. Both professional and knowledgeable she did manage the diversity of the guests well(we were traveling with 2 kids and there were some old people who needed assistance along with several young people and she did a good job of both explaining the locations and ensuring that the group was together and on time). The locations chosen were above average. I understand this can be highly subjective and varies greatly with individual tastes. Some aspects about the tour:
HOTEL: Since May is not considered'summer' in Spain(temp was about 30deg C in the daytime!) the hotels do not turn on the air conditioning at night. The first hotel in Madrid I assumed that it was my fault that I did not turn on the AC right. At the second hotel in Valencia, when I contacted the front desk about the AC, they let me in on this horrible secret about not turning on the AC until mid-May. Since there were no ceiling fans, their suggestion was to'open the windows'(I am NOT joking!) for air! I could hear people yelling in the street all night long when I'opened the windows'. Honestly, I don't care what the policy of the hotel is. If I pay money in a 3-4 star hotel, I expect to be in full control of the air/water in my room. I was scared that they would probably ask me to stand in the rain if I wanted to take a shower! If I wanted to experience nature, I could have slept on the street and not paid for a star hotel! When I started talking to other people on the tour, they were shocked to know of this fact. We then complained(after suffering for 3 nights) to the tour manager who said she would speak to the hotel in Barcelona(which she did, and the ac magically came on for the last 2 nights in Barcelona).
BUS: The tour bus was fairly comfortable but our monitors were not working. Overall, no major issues here.
LOCATIONS: We were able to cover all the locations in the tour and were on schedule for most locations. Some places were definitely better than the others and this is the subjective part I was talking about. We did spend a considerable amount of time in the day traveling from location to location. Some people might like it and some might not. We would have preferred to minimize travel time in the day if possible and use the day to visit tourist attractions.
OTHER GUESTS: The rest of the guests were nice and polite and we had no issues with them. Referring to the comment I made above(to refer to details below), this would be the part. As we spoke more with the other guests, we learned of similar experiences they had about their pre-tour booking. One family's trip was supposed to be conducted 2 weeks prior but they had to cancel their tickets and rebook since they were given a similar explanation as us(low turnout/trip postponed etc). They had lost Rs 94000 due to this. At least 2 other families had similar issues. We spoke of our'battles' and'conversations' with TC just to get what we were initially promised. This is what angered me most about Thomas Cook(the fact that they are not serious about their jobs, our lives, our schedules and most importantly their commitment i.e. incompetence and unprofessionalism).
FOOD: All our hotels had standard continental breakfast(included in our package). Dinner was provided by TC. We were taken to an Indian restaurant every night and the food was good/acceptable.
OVERALL while the tour went on well and we had a good tour manager, the pre-tour booking and the issue with the hotels was something that was highly unacceptable which would make me not recommend TC to any other person. After the tour, we found out that one of my wife's relatives booked another tour of Europe on TC(separately) and their price has gone up by Rs. 15k in the last minute! This is a company that is more interested in taking your money and scamming you. Stay away from them if possible!
