Barrhead Travel Service review: lack of communication and information

Good morning,

My husband and I are recently back from our honeymoon which we booked through Barrhead Travel and I have numerous complaints. Our trip was 3 nights in New York, 4 nights in Las Vegas and then 7 nights in Bahamas. We spent almost £7, 000 on this trip and to say I was disappointed by the service would be an understatement. My list of complaints follow:

- a few weeks before our trip when applying for our ESTA Visa's, I googled our hotel to get the contact details for our application, we were booked to stay at the W in Manhattan and I was shocked to see on google that the hotel had now been closed and bought by another company and renamed. No one at Barrhead had bothered to contact us to inform us of this and when I called to ask, I was told "it doesn't really matter its still in the same place but there are not notes on your file" but they would have someone would call me back. Not only did no one bother to call me back but I have never been to New York so the fact that the hotel "is still in the same place" means nothing to me, it's not like I know where I am going, I would have hate to have turned up in a new city and asked for a cab to take me to a hotel to be told it wasn't there anymore.

- Two weeks later we received an email to say our tickets were ready. When we arrived in store the agent started to go through our itinerary and I was shocked to hear that so much of our travel itinerary had changed with no update from Barrhead what so ever. Like I said before I had called the store only 2 weeks before to be told their was nothing on our file. Our outbound flight was now leaving 2.5 hours later than when we had booked. We were only in New York for 3 nights and the early flight time was one of the reasons we weren't staying in New York an extra night however now rather than arriving in the afternoon, we weren't arriving until almost dinner time. meaning we were basically missing half a day. When I told the agent we already had a tour booked, her only response was, I'd have cancelled that anyway I doubt you would make it, takes 3 hours to get through customs and into the City, something that was never mentioned to us when booking and also FYI, it did not take us 3 hours to through customs and into the City so if the flights had not been changed we would have made our tour. This flight change really impacted our trip and I cannot express enough our disappointment in this change and the fact we weren't even informed by it is even more disappointing.

- Our return flights were also changed, meaning we were going from a 3 hour layover in New York to a 6 and a half hour layover. Again with no notification from Barrhead of this change. Our flight from the Bahamas to New York was changed to an earlier time and our flight from New York to Edinburgh was also changed to a later time, meaning we left our resort in the Bahamas at 9:30am on Saturday the 6th of October and didn't arrive back in Edinburgh until 10:00am on Sunday 7th of October. Again this isn't what we signed up to when we booked this trip and really put a dampener on our last day.

- the attitude of the agent in the Glasgow Fort is something I would also add to the complaint. If I'm honest she couldn't care less about my complaints to the changes and the lack of notification from Barrhead. She advised that the flight changes were made in December and that we were notified. When I told her I had called 2 weeks ago and was told nothing was on the file and that we hadn't received anything she basically just shrugged her shoulders. We checked the email on file and they definitely had our correct details but we definitely had not received any emails or phone calls from Barrhead at any point to say there had been changes made to our flights, however we did receive the email to say our tickets were ready to clarify that the details were definitely correct.

- When we got home I checked our tickets and again had to contact Barrhead, there was no notification of any check in times - I have never been on an international flight so was not aware that check in was 3 hours before. There was also no notification of our baggage allowance so I had to confirm this also. We also specifically asked to book seats on all our flights as we previously flew to Mexico and hadn't pre-booked our seats and ended up sitting at opposite ends of the plane however only 1 flight had seats booked, despite us specifically requesting this when we booked. Luckily the seats weren't yet fully claimed so we were able to book our seats together, but had I not queried this we may have ended up not sitting together despite it being a specific request. Also a friend of mine had also booked her honeymoon through Barrhead and had been told to check in online, but online checking wasn't even mentioned to us so I also had to call and clarify this.

- When we were ready to leave New York and head to Las Vegas again there were no details of check in times once again. I have never got an internal flight in the US before so I don't understand why check in times are just assumed. I tried googling it but there were multitude of answers between 45 minutes to an hour and a half so I had to call Barrhead from New York to clarify - to be told it was 2 hours. Again you can't just expect people would know this. Then when we arrived at JFK we were attempting to check in on one of the self service machines as advised by the JFK staff. After trying every reference number on our itinerary I had no choice but to phone Barrhead again as none of the reference numbers were working. I couldn't believe when the adviser said that VS/ reference had to have the VS/ dropped, it was just the following numbers that were the reference number. Again how would i know that! no one mentioned this to us when we picked up this documentation. Luckily our flight was in the afternoon and so Barrhead in the UK was still open. But there seems to be a pattern emerging that Barrhead just seem to assume far to much, and therefore do not pass on enough information.

- When we booked the initial plan was to leave Las Vegas on Saturday to fly to the Bahamas, however the agent recommended an overnight flight on the Friday night to save a nights accommodation in Vegas and get the full day in the Bahamas which sounded like a great idea so this is the option we went for however they failed to mention that our hotel check in wasn't until 3pm! So we arrived at the hotel at 9am and had to sit in the lobby for almost 6 hours! Had we been told this we would have either paid for early check in if that had been an option or we would have just stayed in Vegas another night and left for the Bahamas in the morning, as it was all well and good having the full day in the Bahamas but we didn't really. We weren't dressed to sit out in the sun, we were dressed for a flight. We had been travelling for the past 10 hours so the last thing you want is to just be sitting about the hotel lobby, you want to get into your room and get showered and changed so we were extremely disappointed by this lack of communication once again.

- Finally when we arrived at JFK there was an onscreen message at customs with regards to connecting flights that stated that passengers had to collect their baggage for connecting flights and re-check them in. I had never heard of this but I have never actually got a connecting flight before this trip so again I had to call Barrhead and clarify as we hadn't had to do this from our Las Vegas to the Bahamas connecting flight. The agent at Barrhead told us that we shouldn't have to collect the bags but we may have to identify them, but we were never told any information in regards to our connecting flights before hand and this just added extra stress for us, again just total lack of communication from Barrhead.

The fact that this trip cost almost £7, 000 I honestly cannot express enough the disappointment with the lack of communication, information and customer service we received from Barrhead Travel. Never have I had to call a travel agent while on holiday to clarify any details, so to have to do this multiple times is just appalling. This was our first trip with Barrhead Travel and from this experience I highly doubt we would ever book another trip with Barrhead or recommend to anyone else. This was a very special trip, our honeymoon which was tainted by these constant issues, all of which could have been easily avoided if Barrhead would actually communicate information with customers and not just make assumptions that everyone has flown internationally with connecting flights before and we expect to be compensated for this bad experience.