ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY "THOMAS COOK VACATIONS" FROM DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS

[Me.]

"THESE ARE ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY "THOMAS COOK VACATIONS" FROM DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS:
1. "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."
2. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."
3. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."
4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price."
5. "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room."
6. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow."
7. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time -- this should be banned."
8. "No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."
9. "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."
10. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
11. "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun."
12. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair."
13. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends' three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller."
14. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the resort.' We're trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service."
15. "When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners."
16. "We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning."
17. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
18. "I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes."
19. "My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

Source: Peter Dickinson

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. OMIGOD.

[Dustlawyer]

18. And we wonder how so many can fall for the propaganda.

[elleng]

2. HAHAHAHAHA!

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Well, you gonna deal with that level of clientele

You going to have people looking down their noses at everything

[Baggies]

4. Reminds me of a Steve Martin routine

"You don't appreciate your own language until you go to a foreign country that doesn't have the *courtesy* to speak English."

[Frustratedlady]

5. And, we waste all this time trying to figure out where these people come from, since there seem to

be so many crazy stories.

They walk among us, so spend your time doing something constructive like scouring DU for weird stories.

[NoMoreRepugs]

6. I want to call BullShit but then I realized how many Americans travel.

[SharonClark]

21. Thomas Cook is a British travel company.

[CaptainTruth]

7. Some of those have to be jokes. They HAVE to be, right???

I mean, people can't really be that ignorant... can they?

"No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."

[oldsoftie]

17. I agree. As stupid as people are today, a lot of these are over-the-top

especially the "too many Spanish people" in SPAIN

[dsc]

8. I will give them the towel part of 3

I could see thinking towels would be provided at a water resort.

[catchnrelease]

9. Definitely not jokes

My sister worked for a govt agency in Inyo County in California. She once sent me some comments that her forestry friends had passed along to her, made by visitors to the mountain trails in the Eastern Sierra. Things like--at one trailhead it said there should be a McDonalds there as there was no place to eat; trails too steep, should be an escalator available. Wacky things like that! So, I never underestimate the clueless-ness of tourists!

[Karadeniz]

10. PRICELESS !!!!!

[highplainsdem]

11. Wow. I was assuming these were just very naive Americans whining, till I got to the one

with the complaint that the convenience store didn't sell "proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nut."

British whiners, too.

You have to wonder why some people leave home when they clearly can't handle anything different from home.

EDITING to add that I just googled the name of the company that got these complaints. British company, so probably most of the complaints are from Brits. Who, honestly, I wouldn't expect to be quite so naive, living in a small country with a lot of other countries nearby.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

22. False flag!

[luvtheGWN]

12. This may sound insulting (forgive me please!) but....

I live in a lovely little town in southern Ontario which is a tourist mecca for folks from around the world. It's just 20 or so miles north of Niagara Falls and from my back deck I can view the most northwestern area of NYS.

I'm convinced that many Americans who come for a visit refuse to read maps or have ever looked at a globe! Shopkeepers here have stories about Americans asking the most inane questions. For example: A couple in the afternoon asked my shopkeeper friend if they could drive to Montreal and be back in time for dinner. She pointed to a map on the wall behind the cash register, showed the scale, and said "What do you think?" And FYI, it would take a good 5 hours to drive from here to Montreal! I've directed other people to Toronto and am STILL always surprised that they don't carry maps (and many don't know how to use their car's GPS). There's a certain devil-may-care attitude which, I must admit, can be quite refreshing. We Canucks are generally much more careful!

We get a lot of European and east Asian tourists too. They at least have a sense of the size of Canada (second largest in the world) and seem to study up on the country beforehand!

[Warpy]

13. Egad! Foreign countries are full of FOREIGNERS!

The travel brochures should have mentioned something about that! We were afraid to leave the hotel, we couldn't handle all that jabbering. Why can't they be civilised and speak English?

The UK has Karens. Who knew?

[TeamProg]

14. Mostly Brits !! (no offense, Americans are notoriously stupid, too) n/t

[gibraltar72]

15. 12 and 19!!!

[Martin68]

16. These are hilarious- and sadly indicative of how provincial English-speaking travelers often

are. I think #12 was made in jest, ""It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair." #19, as well.

I lived in Japan for 20 years. A friend's Japanese wife once observed that "there are so many foreigners" while taking a domestic flight in the U.S.

[Ms. Toad]

19. Unfortuantely, some resorts have apparently taken complaint #2 seriously.

We just returned from Cozumel. Every single meal at the all-inclusive resort featured quasi-American/Asian/Italian food, rather than Mexican. So disappointed. There was pico-de-gallo at most meals, raw jicima at about half, and most breakfasts included breakfast tortillas. That is about the extent of it.

(When I noted it to fellow travelers their response was, "What do you expect for the price we paid - 5-star meals?." My response was I'm fine with 3-star meals - as long as they are 3-star Mexican meals.

[mountain grammy]

20. I live in a tourist town..

right now there are a few thousand packed into my tiny town of 400 residents. After 35 years I believe I've heard it all.. nothing surprises me anymore.