Quote:
| Originally Posted by [BoB]Bandit the flight was with thompson although booked through longwood Holidays.
first problem of the holiday began when i realised just how heavy my kit was and we where only allowed 20kg per person.
i was told by the flight company that we got an extra 5kg per diver (sigh)
on production of diving certs. |
Oh dear - Thompsons really need to get their act together. I am in the process of sending a seething letter to ThompsonAir/Britannia myself. this is what happened to us last week on trip to Tenerife, flying from Luton, booked with Thompsons (3 people).
Ring first to check allowance, told no allowances for divers, just 20kg. Told that it would be £3.50 per kg over the limit. Arrive at check-in and was told we were 11kg over and would have to pay £55 (£5 per kg). I mentioned that we were Scuba divers and that they should enlighten themselves with other airlines' policies of extra allowance but to no avail.
Went to Serviceair to pay. The girl said she thought there was an allowance of 5kg per person on showing of dive card and that golfers get as much as they want for £27. She said we had to pay to get our luggage on but could speak to the Thompson desk who should know and maybe we could get a refund. Paid and spoke to Thompson desk. She had no idea about golfers or scuba divers but gave us number of Thompsonair Customer Service. Rang them, no idea, told to ring Britannia who were the airline. Britannia said Thompsons were the ones to contact and gave third number. (Yes we are that sad that we spent valuable shopping time spending a fortune on mobile phone!). The point was that if it was correct that we got the allowance then we were within the limit anyway and we wanted this sorted to avoid this problem at the other end (Spanish check-in - yeah yeah!). We ended up making about 10 phone calls until someone at Thompson Air said oh yes, you can have 5kg per person if you show your dive card - you do not need to tell us in advance. I relayed this to Serviceair who got over the original check in staff who then turned out to be a trainee and who said we did not show cards (??). We said we told him we were divers. The fact that the guy had no idea about anything is neither here nor there. Cut a long story short, we got the refund because although everyone said to pay and argue when we got back I wanted it sorted then because either there is an allowance or there isn't and we did not want this coming back. The irony is that coming back, we were the same if not a little more overweight and had our cards ready but she neither asked nor cared and our stuff just went through.
We had decided next time to get an email but it seems you did just that and still had hassle. I know there is lots of press in the dive mags about this but that this still happens is incredibly frustrating. It would seem that you got the allowance in the end and the £99 is for baggage excess over that, otherwise I would have advised you to write and complain and get a refund.
It is impossible to anticipate in advance this extra allowance situation.
Ho hum
Still holiday was brilliant and no more hassles after that!
Regards
Calamity