It’s still Day 0 for my Melbourne Trip and I thought I would get some of my experiences I had with my Travel agency down here. It was a very exciting process getting the trip settled, but I was NOT HAPPY with the way certain things were done at the very last minute and that ruin the entire “relationship” I had with that company. I, probably, will not use this agency again and I will also caution people out there against it.
It started out as a query over the phone in response to their newspaper advertisement about a 6D Melbourne Trip. I was reasonably happy with the service over the phone and quite liked the package compared to other tour agencies, because the tour was conducted by a local (Australian) tour agency, not an all Singaporean group. That was the deal breaker in fact.
Anyhow, I felt that as a tour planner, the person was not proactive enough to suggest or recommend things which I had failed to take into account, so I had to make many phone calls to them. Issues such as Credit Card surcharge, Ticket flight date, Hotel-airport transfers, etc.
When we finally decided to head down to the company to make payment, there was still a long conversation between my mum and the person and finally, after much discussion, we were heading down to the NATAS Fair to make payment instead because of the waiver of Credit Card surcharge at the fair and all the freebies. I must say the person could have mention such a situation before hand, saving us the trouble of going down to talk to them at their office, since I had already asked about the credit card surcharge. It appears they were more interested in getting the deal first and pocketing their commission.
At this point in time, we had already gotten him to reserve the tickets for the preferred date and time of the flight. He told us that as long as we made payment before the lapse period for the ticket he could issue the ticket for us and we could have gotten the tickets we wanted. The lapse date was 25 March 2007 and we went to the Natas Fair to make payment on 23 March 2007.
NATAS Fair came and went, we were happy at the NATAS Fair with all the freebies.
Finally on Wednesday (28 March), after I informed him of the extra optional tours I wanted, the guy said that I could only get all the documents on Saturday after 5 pm. So, wait …
Friday evening, he called me to tell me that I could not get the preferred time of my flight. The reason: the flight was overbooked at the Natas Fair. I asked him how could that happened when we had made the reservation before hand and there was the lapse period. I also asked him if it was because he never issue the ticket on time and let it lapsed? He said, oh the airline don’t let people issue tickets over the weekend. I was like then how the airline earn money? He said their company policy only allows them to issue ticket on Monday. (Which was a huge CONTRADICTION to what he said to us on the Natas Fair on Friday night the week before: We very busy one, after the fair closes at night, we still have to return to office to settled all the bookings made that evening.)
Hmm … Hmm … Very contradictory, hor?!
My other gripe was that if you could not get the preferred time of flight, why did he not inform me earlier and only wait until Friday to inform? (It was like waiting until the last minute before he told me so that I could do absolutely nothing, but just follow whatever he had gotten.)
When I finally got hold of the tickets issued, I saw that it was issued on the 28th March, that was a Wednesday. He had waited until 28 March to get the ticket issued (PREVIOUS TICKET HAD BEEN LAPSED – ACCIDENTALLY OR INTENTIONALLY?) and he had waited 2 days before he informed me of the issue, which he subsequently still lied about.
Every little thing about the company’s inadequacies was fine except for the ticketing issue. That was the main reason for this airing of grievances.
Therefore, spread the word, to your dear friends and relatives, be wary when dealing with them! In my experiences, they are even less trust worthy than the Tour Agencies I had dealt with in China.