DO NOT ignore. Learn from others’ mistakes.
They will not provide full days promised. It will be shorter by few hours.
Will ask you to wait for fellow passengers for 4-5 hours at the airport. Justification: group tour and this is expected.
3. Rooms: Rooms will have dirty cups, poor room upkeep, broken and yellow commodes, no water in toilets, extra bed in shaft (Some hotels worst than dharamshalas). Refer snapshots.
4. Restaurants: Hotel staff will remind you that you can have only minimal breakfast and not full (the displayed b/f), since U from a group. Oops you will find it insulting. Will serve you breakfast menu in lunch. To avoid such situations TC will shift venue from regular restaurant to a hall.
5. Food: Although the restaurant standards were low, almost all the times. All travelers complained for quality and venue in Paris but were forced to have food/even packed at/from same restaurant. I hope TC must have multiple low quality restaurants on their panel. It was there high headedness to make you eat at same restaurant. One of the restaurant had quarter plates as cutlery.
6. Transport: They will not hire a bus from a professional transport company. One of the bus lag didn’t have GPS. We traveled extra 4 hrs. (driver missed the turn to port ). You lose your relaxing time. This incidence happened while leaving London Port.
All the immigration officers had left the time we reached the port. My exit from UK is not registered. i.e. As per records I am still in London.
Pls note they provide you semi Luxury bus.(Recline max 30 degree) and expect travelers to travel 5-8 hrs a day.
7. TC Savings: They book for Bed and Breakfast hotel which are away from city (expect around 1 hr away). In Paris we traveled back another hour in evening to check into the hotel. We missed sightseeing hours and initial shows (happens to be in city) because of POOR PLANNING/or with the intent to saving FEW EUROS. Travelers lost couple of hours in transit.
- Ir responsive back-end Team: If you travel couple of hours searching for a restaurant (TC back-end team gave a different location of the restaurant) you lose sight seeing time.
9. Everyone was appreciative of Tour manager services to manage and convince the big group always for setting low standards. TC took this as appreciation of their work and contacted one of my friend(also a TC traveler), I complained TC about our ordeal.
But they never responded to me directly, not even Mr. Devgan(Vice President TC) who happens to be my college senior and knows me.
You will be made to feel that you are ON A CHARITY TRIP AND NOT premium budget trip. I along with many other passengers were counting on days when the trip ends.
In case you want a descriptive letter I have written to TC. Pls let me know.
(Max photos allowed is 2 else would have posted more photos)
HI GUYS, AFTER MY WRITEUP TC WOKE UP. Got a very unconvincing reply, assuring me that everything was fine. I could not bear there gimmick anymore and responded.
From: guptsanjay@hotmail.com
To: service.quality@in.thomascook.com; sankalp.kumar@in.thomascook.com; guptsanjay@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: ’TCIL=457-466’ Thomas Cook (India) Ltd : Mr. Sanjay Gupta
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 16:02:04 +0000
Hi,
I have numbered your responses so that you understand my responses well. please find my observations:
1) I am discussing about the quality of hotel and not "select hotels, keeping their location in mind, proximity to the travel route to be taken the next day, budget, etc." Hotels with broken and yellow (dirty) commode, intermittent water supply, dirty walls & cups, and at one instance dharamshala like room are not expected.
2) You term coach without a GPS in Europe, water spilling out from A/C ducts occasionally seat recliner (so called) not working for couple of seat as standard in quality.
3) No records of how much Lido show I missed. I have to buy your story. I believe no good show will be delayed by more than an hour, whatever the relation you might have.
4) I understand that you cannot meet taste bud of all the Customers but should for maximum traveler’s in same group. Paris restaurant toilet not even having a flush handle (managed by a polythene bag), will give you an fair idea of the standards of Paris restaurant.
Brussels restaurant not aware what he served, serving breakfast instead of lunch, having quarter plates as cutlery- Any comments on these.
" We are constrained by the lack of quality Indian restaurants"- Just to remind you we passed many Indian moderate restaurants on the way.
5) I understand that Thomas Cook is not liable for any of its action. If we had reached as per schedule, the situation of visa exit stamping would have not arouse. I need to write to British embassy about this event and need to find a solution.
If know you negotiated as per TC ultra low standards, if you were little considerate, the group would have been much rRajeev_Vermacted by the hotel staff. You may also want to let me know the reasons for not fulfilling on committed days etc..
I remember of story, which I read in my childhood. There was a man who lived in his own world. He started naming all the realistic things in this world by his own name. Like a donkey, he would call as a panther. By the time he renamed all the objects he was out of the society for obvious reasons.
Similarly do not term all your low standards by your Customers accepted pleasures.
Regards,
Sanjay Gupta