My partner and I wanted to plan the trip of a lifetime. My partner has been saving for the last three years to finally secure a mortgage, and as a way to celebrate, I thought one last hurrah of a holiday would be a great way to celebrate before we enter the next chapter. I have heard a few mixed reviews about loveholidays, however my mother booked through them before and had no issues so I thought it couldn’t hurt – oh was I wrong. On the 6th of January, I called loveholidays to begin planning this trip of a lifetime. As first experiences go, I had a very pleasant lady dealing with my booking over the phone. She was very informative, and very confident and about the hotel of choice. Stating she knew a lot about the hotel, all the different rooms, all the different views, what the hotel had to offer et cetera. I felt at ease, I felt her reassured due to her familiarity with the hotel. When discussing the booking, she asked did I want a resort view or did I want to Seaview? I asked the difference in price, she said it was an extra few hundred for the seaview which was a deluxe room, and I said the standard double room will do just fine. We didn’t care all that much about a view. And so the booking was made and I paid a quick deposit which is always a great way to secure a booking, as you can pay in instalments. I paid over €300 for the deposit for us both and all seemed fine. Fast forward a few days later, I’m really looking forward to this holiday in April and so I start looking at the latest reviews. For context, prior to booking I researched the hotel and several hotels around the area. I would be very hesitant to pay a lot of money if a hotel didn’t have the best reviews. And seeing as it was Cancun of all places and the price that you would imagine that holiday would cost, I did vigorous research. So over the next few days, I decide to start checking in with TripAdvisor and see if there were any new reviews. I come across the latest review (I’ll attach) of the standard double room that we booked. Looking at the review, I’m sure you can imagine my shock when I read it. The first thing I did was contact loveholidays immediately. They are not the easiest people to get hold of as you could be waiting quite awhile to actually get through to someone, but I did manage to get through to someone thankfully, I spent about 25 minutes on the phone to a customer service representative explaining the whole situation. The great thing about loveholidays is that their bookings and all conversations are recorded. I’ve advise customer representative to please listen back to that recording and I asked that a ticket be raised with regards to the room change. The next day, I decided to follow up, and I spoke with someone virtually who advised me that no ticket was raised – you can imagine my frustration. And again, I’m left ringing loveholidays, explaining the same situation to another representative, another 30 minutes on the phone. However, this time my ticket is finally raised. Fast forward a few days, nothing has changed and so I’m left ringing them again, speaking to yet another representative for over 30 minutes and hoping that there will be some resolution. A few days later, I finally got an email from their “amendments team” with the quote for a room upgrade. They advise me that the price of the package had increased an extra €800, but they were going to deduct that amount from the balance as they were going to compensate for the error on misleading information sold to me during my booking. I was delighted, finally seem to be getting somewhere, and the organisation were taking the hit as they knew that they were fault. However, we just had one problem, the room that they had quoted me for, is not a room that is actually available in that specific hotel. I emailed back to query further and have them clarify what room this was going to be as I was fearful that we’d end up with another hotel room for 10 days and 35° heat with no window. I never heard back, so I decided to call loveholidays again. Coincidentally, the so-called amendments team, cannot be contacted via phone and you can only get through to them by responding to the email. I spent another 30+ minutes on the phone to yet another customer representative – I honestly felt like a broken record. I asked the customer representative if there was any way that she could tell me more as she could see the emails back-and-forth from her screen. She tried her best but she couldn’t do much. She told me to just wait for an update. Now bear in mind, loveholidays were only giving me 48 hours to actually come to an agreement on the room, so I felt a bit under pressure, and a bit stressed trying to get this all sorted before the first direct debit goes out of my account on the 6th of February. As of today, I’ve just received an email, and let me tell you it is not a response to my query on the room change, it was actually a brand-new quote of a new upgrade and an additional €1600 they were trying to charge me. I got back to them in an email as I was so confused. I had emailed them back the other day to query the first new upgraded quote, and before I confirmed the change, I wanted to know why the room did not matching any of the rooms on the hotel website..and they never got back to that. INSTEAD, they were giving me a brand-new quote, and no compensation this time. I have honestly had enough, how many times do you need to call, and how many emails do you need to send to try and get some kind of resolution? I’m usually a calm person, I wouldn’t be one to rock the boat or complain, but my god, I have never been more frustrated in my entire life. So what did I do? Decided I was going to cancel the booking entirely. I am just off the phone to loveholidays now. They are trying to charge me €1360 to cancel my booking. I only paid around €300 to make a deposit. I told them over the phone that I was not going to pay that amount to cancel the booking when I received the worst customer service support, and a sales agent who sold me the most misleading information about a hotel I’ve ever had in my life. I asked them to escalate my ticket to management to see if we can make a deal on the cancellation charge. I advise them that I don’t mind paying some of it if loveholidays are willing to compensate that €800 they initially said they would for a room change towards the cancellation charge. All I can say is this is to be continued right now. I’ll probably have to wait a few more days until they get back to me, but I’m really hoping that it is before the direct debit date. I can’t express my frustration but I can encourage people to not use this organisation when booking for a holiday. It might all seem great, and the prices might seem fantastic, but at the end of the day if you have any issues with your booking, they will not help you. The stress this caused, it took the upmost goodness out of the holiday we’d hoped for. I don’t have money to throw around, it took the guts of a year to actually scrap money together for this dream holiday. I hope this issue might reach some listeners that were thinking of booking their summer holiday this year with loveholidays. After my experience, I really hope you don’t.