Thompson/Room booking issue!

[Nathan Banks]

Hi guys, I was advised to post this here to see if someone can help me. We're going back to Disney in November and we're staying in the All Star Movies Resort (which is our favourite).

We booked with Thompson and our receipt says that we're in a preferred room; this is mainly because we wanted to stay in a 101 Dalmatians and a couple of other reasons. We specifically asked them if we could have a preferred as one of the reasons we enjoy All Star Movies is because Fantasia, Dalmatians and Toy Story are our favourite movies and we love staying in those rooms.

Anyway, I linked our booking to the Disney App and I was quite surprised to see that we were in a Standard room; which to my knowledge is Herbie or Mighty Ducks.
We've phone Thompson and they've told us it's an issue on Disney's part; so we phoned Disney and they've told us that Thompson booked us into a standard room. Now we've contacted Thompson and for 7 weeks now we've been told "escalations" are dealing with it and we should wait for their response. We're getting really impatient and obviously annoyed as our final payment date is August and we wanted the room situation sorted before then. I know it may not seem like a big deal with the room situation, but we paid extra for a preferred room also; what's worse is that on the Thompson website now, All Star Movies doesn't even show up as having any rooms available for that date any more. (the actual disney website does, but thompson doesnt). We've been told that they're "hoping" to swap it, but escalations are dealing with it and we're just really fed up. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? The holiday was booked in store and we can't contact anyone online or customer services either

 

[CAL2]

I would have thought that as the holiday is booked through Thompson it is them who has to sort out the mistake. your paper work clearly states you have booked and paid for a preferred room.

Get as much information together as you can, go online and look up your consumer rights, and read the small print on your contract. hope you get it sorted.

 

[AcrossthePondNic]

Virgin did the same thing to us in 2015. We made it quite clear we'd only be booking in store that day if it was a Royal Room Garden View at POR. So that's what all their paperwork said and we paid the premium for that room. The confirmation from Disney showed up as a standard room.

I'm sorry to say that in our situation it turned out they'd promised us something they didn't have. They'd not got any Royal Rooms allocated to Virgin at the time we booked but they took our booking anyway, hoping to get us one later and we wouldn't notice it. I spoke to Disney, who were very helpful and told me what they thought Virgin had done, which turned out to be exactly what they had done, as per above.

We were a long way out when I discovered what Virgin had done so I wasn't prepared to let them keep our booking on that occasion due to being lied to by them. So I got a refund and booked direct with Disney. Please don't think I'm saying that you will need to take such action. You're much further along than we were. It was only about a month after I made the booking and alarm bells had been ringing for about 3 weeks already in our case due to lots of conflicting paperwork. To be honest they may very well have sorted it for us further down the line. But I was so disgusted with their agent I wasn't prepared to give them my business so they never got the chance. To be fair, they did try to be helpful when I called them out on it.

You have paperwork confirming what you paid for. Read the fine print to see if it says anywhere that it was just a request. But if you're paying the additional premium for a preferred room then it's not a request even if it says that and they shouldn't be charging you for it if you're not getting it. You're also protected if you paid by card. Visa debit cards offer consumer protection too, not just credit cards. If you make enough noise hopefully they'll sort it out for you. You may even get something thrown in for the hassle they've caused you. Once I started talking about being mis-sold and them knowing full well that I wasn't going to book unless I could get that specific room category- so I felt they had tricked me into booking they were very attentive, even told me I didn't have to deal with the shop, they would do it all through their central bookings, but I was too stubborn to let them.

I hope you get it sorted. Keep at them. And let us know how you get on.