Would you make a further/formal complaint?

[spenners]

As the mum of an autistic adult I understand, if you are similar to my DD, that it’s difficult to stop thinking about something once it is in your thoughts. If it would help you move on could you contact the hotel and ask the question/tell them how their mistake impacted you?

[munmun]

Originally Posted by Darwen Bird

I’ll start this by making clear I am autistic and can’t deal with unexpected events very well but also have a propensity to not make a fuss.

Our flights, car and hotel were booked as a package through Virgin Holidays way back in Nov 2023. We had a brilliant flight out on 29 October and arrived at the Margaritaville Resort in Kissimmee around 5:30pm.

On checking in we were told there was NO RECORD of our reservation, the guy checking us in triple checked then asked if we had a confirmation of the booking - I don’t know why, but on my last day in work I actually printed all the vouchers & tickets from VH despite them being available electronically. I was so glad I’d done this as I was able to show a printed copy of the hotel booking. It did take a while for their back office staff to check what the issue was during which time I was beginning to go into my ‘shutdown down’ mode as a coping mechanism. I found out later that the resort had deleted our VH booking. Staff at the front desk were really good in getting things sorted and creating a new booking exactly as per our original VH booking (14 nights, a $100 resort credit and no resort fees), but the room allocation was less than ideal, and nothing was offered to make up for the problem.

The stress of this situation had a big knock on effect on me; I don’t think I’ve ever been to Florida and woken up later than 5am on the first day - it was 9:30am before I woke up, so we had quite a bit of rejigging of plans (which meant we missed out on one key activity in the end).

I did contact the VH USA reps to let them know what had happened. Again the reps were good in that they contacted the hotel, with the hotel offering just a $100 additional food and drink credit, but nothing else. They couldn’t move us to another room as the resort was overbooked.

We didn’t want the problems to define our holiday, so put it to the back of our minds and enjoyed ourselves.

On checking out it was clear the additional $100 food and drink credit had not been added to our room which given the earlier problems I half expected. It was added in eventually but only after I’d shown a duty manager a copy of the email I’d had from the VH reps.

In this situation would you make a more formal complaint to Virgin Holidays? I’d initially felt that it wasn’t their fault - that lies solely with the resort - but given the impact it had on me and the fact my booking was made with Virgin Holidays I’m reconsidering.

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I am also interested camp of let it go.

Well done on printing all your information, congratulate yourself in dealing with it, all these things are important in life experiences.

I think we all need to be prepared for things not going entirely to plan, it is the way it's resolved that counts and it seems like that both the hotel and virgin worked hard to sort it out.

Move on and reflect on the good parts of your holiday.

[ClaireNJ]

Well annoying as it was to turn up & find no record of your booking at least the hotel made amends with the $100
So as the song says
Let it Go
And this is from someone who loves to argue 🙈hope you had the best time anyway 😎🇺🇸

[HelenLime]

I can understand how that would play on your mind. Whilst the mistake was rectified, it did impact on your holiday.

I’m guessing your point about room allocation is that had they known you were coming you may have ended up with a different room, not the only one left. That does suck and I can understand you being annoyed.

I think, in reality, there is nothing to be gained from a further complaint to Virgin. If you wanted to feel you’d done more, would you consider writing a fair, balanced and factual trip advisor review?

Well done on having the paperwork with you and for dealing with a very stressful situation. My daughter is autistic and a situation like that would have taken a lot out of her.

[cornishfrogboy]

I would just let it go. It would seem to me that both Hotel (where they have admitted the error lay) and VH have done everything they could to rectify the situation and indeed, were generous. Mistakes happen, you deal with them and then you move on with life.

I am glad that you took printed copies of documents (as we always do). It is a very good ‘fail safe’ in the event of a Computer Crash or similar. It enabled a prompt solution to the issue in your case.

[white room]

Fill out the complaint form or send them an email with pretty much what you have wrote on here, then let it go.

[shirley]

I would be delighted if I slept till 930am onthe 1st day, gets you set up for the whole day.

[kirstya1973]

On one of our trips to Florida in Feb 2006, we arrived at the Enclaves to be told they had no booking for us. I too had all my documents as not much was online back then. It turned out that because I had booked my holiday in November 2004, when the agent (Travelcity - no longer an agency now) put our details through to the Enclaves - they mistakenly booked Feb 2005 and not 2006.

It took a while to be sorted and eventually we got into our rooms and they were absolutely shocking. Dirty, the camp bed wouldn't fold down as it kept hitting our bed which couldn't be moved, we were on the ground floor but the patio door didn't lock plus other issues. We complained but as it was Presidents Weekend, they couldn't move us for 3 days due to being fully booked. They provided breakfast every day for us and after 3 days they moved us to a 2 bedroom suit which were lovely.

I didn't complain to Travelcity as it wasn't their fault it was the hotels fault, we were lucky that we were able to get breakfast included and an upgraded room. Like others have said it didn't majorly spoil your holiday so maybe leave it and any future holidays do what I now do and email the accommodation directly stating that you are looking forward to your forthcoming holiday and ask for a specific request i.e higher floor, and that was you can be abreast of any situation before it occurs.

[abiknox]

Id say it was an error that was sorted quickly and compensated accordingly. Absolutely something I would let go.

[ERICSMUM]

Originally Posted by spenners

As the mum of an autistic adult I understand, if you are similar to my DD, that it’s difficult to stop thinking about something once it is in your thoughts. If it would help you move on could you contact the hotel and ask the question/tell them how their mistake impacted you?

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Thanks for this. It’s what I was trying to say in my post - all the advice to ‘let it go’ 🎶 might not be appropriate for all of us.