In March this year, we booked our holiday with your company after seeing offers on teletext. When we booked we spoke to a person called 'Geoff'. We asked him a number of questions regarding the offers/hotels and one of the questions was the distance to the beach from the hotels (we wanted a hotel by the beach). He informed us that the beach from the Tropicana hotel was approximately 100 meters (his actual words were "it's literally at the bottom of the garden"). However after a lenthy discussion we were assured Tropicana Hotel in Oludeniz, Turkey was an excellent hotel and it has four stars. We were also told that we had to pay ₤340 per person. We were quite pleased with the information so went ahead and booked the holiday.
After booking, we found negative reviews on the internet about the Tropicana Hotel. After seeing this information, we immediately contacted Sunstar Leisure. However, they assured us that it was a good hotel. A few days later, we decided to upgrade to another four star hotel called Oludeniz Resort Hotel. We spoke to 'Joe' and 'Andy' and were informed that we had to pay a further ₤200.00 as this hotel had better services. We also had to pay additional ₤38.76 to cover the administrative costs of changing hotels (see document no. 1).
Since it was our 10th Wedding Anniversary, we were happy to pay the additional amount to get a better service as this was a very special holiday for us. At the time of changing from the Tropicana to Oludeniz
Resort Hotel, 'Andy' informed us that there would be no problem because we were only changing our accomodation and not the flight details. He also informed us there was sufficient time tomake these changes - his exact words were "there is more than 8 weeks".
After three weeks, the invoice had not arrived. We decided to contact you and found out that you had an incorrect address for us. When we finally received the invoices the transfer letter read that we were being transferred to the Tropicana. Again we contacted 'Andy' by E-Mail and asked for correct information. He then sent us a new invoice indicating we were booked for the Oludeniz Resort Hotel (see document no.2).
We arrived in Turkey- Dalaman on the 6th June 2005. When we went to the 'Yesil Dalyan Desk',as instructed by you, we were told that we were being transferred to the Tropicana Hotel. We tried showing them the invoices and tried to explain that they had incorrect information but got nowhere as they spoke very little English. Finally we were told that the Rep will see us at the Tropicana at 10am that morning (the time then was 4.30 am). We were unable to contact your company as the time was 2.30am in the UK and your offices only opened at 9am. We arrived at the Tropicana at about 6.30am. We tried to explain to the receptionist what had happened and asked if we can speak to the Rep (we even offered to pay for the call). They refused to let us use the phone but the man at the reception phoned a couple of people and talked in Turkish. After the phone call he then said we were to stay at the Tropicana .
We informed him that we had paid extra money to stay at Oludeniz Resort Hotel and we showed him the invoices. He then said that we had to wait until10am for the Rep to arrive. We were quite appalled by this as we had naturally assumed and trsuted your company to make the correct booking competently and professionally. After leaving the UK at about 10pm the night before, we were very tired and had had no sleep. We expected to be able to have our accomodation as we had paid for it from the 5th , but instead we had to wait a further 5 hours before we even got to see a Rep.
We decided to find out if we had accomodation booked at the Oludeniz Resort Hotel and asked the receptionist to contact them to find out. He refused to do so. Then we asked him how to get to the hotel. He was most unco-operative and refused to provide the information (we even asked the driver on the transportbus, but even he refused to provide the information). Finally we went out and asked a local man who directed us to the hotel. When we arrived at the Oludeniz Resort Hotel we had another shock.
They informed us that we have never been booked there. Further, we heard that they were fully booked for that week (see document no.3 - letter given by the hotel manager). The receptionist there was very sympathetic and helpful. She immediately gave us access to have breakfast and asked us to wait in the lobby until she tried to rectify the problem.
She also informed us that she called 'Yesil Dalyan' Rep., (Engin) He had been most unhelpful and had asked her to sort it out herself. She informed us that, in fact, he was obliged to come sort something out but was refusing. She did, however, reassure us that they are on good terms with the other rep called 'Anne', and they will contact her instead.
At about 9am, the manager( Ozlem Elci) informed us that she has been in contact with Anne and that Anne had confirmed that the hotel made no errors. Anne also said that Engin will come at about 10am to speak to us and find us similar accomadation. Engin arrived at about 10 am, but seemed to be in a rush. He had no apologies or any explanation for us. Instead, he said to us "you are booked to stay at the Tropicana Hotel, you need to go back there". We showed him all our invoices, including the extra money we paid to upgrade to the Oudeniz Resort Hotel, but he then informed us that Sunstar Leisure did book us into the Oludeniz Resort Hotel but had cancelled and booked us back into the Tropicana.
He said that he can show us the written confirmation he had. We told him that he is obliged to find us similar accomodation to Oludeniz Resort Hotel as we had already paid a significant amount of money. He then said to us (after making couple of phone calls) that he had no similar accomodation available but had a vacant room at the Belcekiz Beach Hotel, next door to Oludeniz Resort Hotel. However we had to pay an additional ₤300.00. He also informed us that we had to pay a further ₤60.00 for Tropicana Hotel for a one night stay even though we never stayed there!
We were appalled by the whole thing and refused to pay the amount stated. We also asked him to wait until we had contacted Sunstar Leisure as the time in the UK was 8am and the office was still closed. He then said to us that he had to go elsewhere and we shouldn't risk loosing the vacant room. We then decided to go ahead and pay that amount as we were very tired and was in need of our accomodation to sleep. We finally got our accomodation at about 1pm at the Belcekiz Beach Hotel (please see attached receipt of payment to Yesil Dalyan- document no. 4).
We found Engin to be very unprofessional and he lacked the most basic of customer care skills. He was very impatient and sounded annoyed and irritated, despite the error being on your part. He never came to our resort after our brief encounter on the first day. Even on the day before the departure date there was no information about our transfer time under the 'Yesil Dalyan' notice board, (we noticed other companies had put up details about their cutomers for next day departures). We had to phone him about it, and only then did he fax us details of our departure transfers.
MY FINAL ADVICE TO WHO WISH TO BOOK WITH SUNSTAR LEISURE DON'T BOTHER THEY ONLY INTERESTED IN YOUR MONEY. NOTHING ELSE.
WE WON'T BE BOOKING IN FUTURE WITH SUNSTAR LEISURE.
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Sorry, guys I meant the hotel I stayed was very good service, can't complain about their service. Because we paid extra to that hotel. It is a 5 *. But I would not recommend to anyone go through SunStar Leisure.com agent. I read another article same thing happened to his parents. They did not get the hotel they booked.
MAFARRIMOND 16.07.2005 15:22
Sounds an awful experience - thanks for the warning and welcome to Ciao. Maureen
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Jul 15th, 2005
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