WHIRLAWAY TRAVEL/AMEICAN EXPRESS

Review: I contracted Whirl Away Travel to help coordinate a destination wedding and a group block of 25 rooms. The terms of the contract and payment were inaccurately made to us involving cancellations and penalities (actually no communication was made). When the resort called informing us of these, the travel agent admitted that she missed those terms in the contract and was going to find where it mentioned them. Then I was told I had 3 days to figure out what to do even though it was communicated that we had a longer period of time to determine the amount of rooms that were to be booked and to settle the bill. After complaining that we were not going to pay the penalty because these terms were not communicated to us in the beginning, they denied that they missed the terms in the contract and lied and said everything had been communicated to us clearly and that we were at fault. They were rude and I've never seen a company treat their customers so horribly and just deny and lie their way through something. So after paying them $475 to handle the contract and the booking of the rooms, they mishandled that and expect us to pay the $2,000 in penalites which I believe they are at fault for. Their customer service is horrible and I can't believe they would act that way towards someone who is booking $50,000 worth of hotel rooms.Desired Settlement: I want them to admit they were negligent and pay at least half of the penalty. I would like them to pay all of it but based on the way they treated me and are in denial about what kind of service they provide, they would probably never do that.

Consumer

Response:

[To assist us in bringing this matter to a close, you must give us a reason why you are rejecting the response. If no reason is received your complaint will be closed Administratively Resolved]

Review: [redacted]

I am rejecting this response because:

Whirl Away did not know about the attrition rates for the cancellation of the rooms even though they declare "they knew those contracts inside and out". I was notified by our Travel Agent [redacted] on September 4th by phone that these cancellations were to begin. When I called her back, she told me that she didn't know about them either until [redacted] had called to remind her "and that she must have missed them in the contract". She then emailed me the next day notifying me that she took my contract home so she could "figure it out". I've attched that email noting this. We had just sent out invitations notifiying all our guests they had until October 1st to make their decision on whether or not to attend because based on conversations I had with the manager and [redacted], this is what they advised. At no point was this told to me during the negotiation of the contract. So [redacted] told me to just talk to all of our guests and have them make a decision in 48 hours which was unacceptable to us. Now they are lying about missing this in the contract and blaming me because I signed it. This is why I paid them $475, to deal with the contract so we didn't have to. The contract went back and forth between [redacted] and Whirl Away 3 times before I was even presented with it so I'm assuming that they are acting on my behalf and are telling me correct information. I had 2 conversations with the manager over the phone about how the process worked. And she explained that I should tell my guests the deadline was 2 weeks before the actual deadline (October 18th) and then on October 18th, they would figure out how many rooms we didn't use and then the deposit that we paid for those rooms would be returned to us (we paid 10% of all the rooms). At NO POINT were penalties explained to me because they didn't even know about them! They were negligent and did not read over the contract either because the manager never would have told me the previous statement if she knew about the penalties beginning in September. They are taking ZERO responsibility for this. I am a bit of a pushover so I didn't fight this at first, but after telling my fiancee, he told me that this isn't right and they were trying to put this all on me. If a business is at fault, they should step up and pay for the mistake and not push it on the customer. I should have never been forced to make that decision by September 6th with 48 hours notice. I know they are lying about missing this in the contract. And when I try to confront them over this, I was yelled at (as was my fiancee) and told that they "aren't going to take a loss when I can't prove they are at fault". This is what the manager told me over the phone. I have NEVER been treated so hostile and been yelled at by a business when I am a paying client and brought them over $40,000 of bookings. These conversations took place on 10/14/13 (also when I made my complaint with the Revdex.com) and I emailed the owner and manager (who are mother and daughter) several times after that date and never heard any response from them. They ignored any issues that I brought up and did not even apologize when I asked for one for the way they treated us. I called the manager twice on 10/17/13 to discuss when we would get our final billing and both calls were ignored. I called her again on 10/18/13 and left a voicemail with no response. I finally had to email the travel agent ([redacted]) at 4 pm on the 18th to try to get a response because I didn't want to be surprised by the final bill and that was the day everything had to be finalized. The resolution is no resolution at all. It's still costing US thousands of dollars. The only thing they did was change the timing of everything. They say we will get a refund but that refund would have happened regardless. The refund is due to getting one free room for every 10 rooms booked. So them saying that us getting a refund later as a resolutions is a complete sham. They didn't do that. That's the [redacted] group policy. I want them to pay part of the penalty or at the very minimum, refund the $475 fee they paid us. They keep telling us it's for the excellent customer service they provided but they provided us HORRIBLE customer service. I believe the customer is the judge of that. I have also had at least 4 complaints from my guests about dealing with Whirl Away due to their lack of timeliness, messing up their reservations or not even charging them for the room when they said they had. I would not call that excellent customer service.

Regards,

Business

Response:

Monday, October 28, 2013

Dear [redacted]:

WhirlAway Travel has provided the complainant and all of her wedding guests with professional service and it is unfortunate that she is unhappy with the services she received. On the complainant's behalf, we have negotiated a 50% reduction on her contracted penalty. The complainant will receive a refund in the amount of $1973.57.

Regards