On the beach OTBeach holidays, and OntheBeach.co.uk (all the same site) warning, help and advice.
They (“on the beach”), if you read the appalling reviews and complaints, seem to be using a deceitful sales tactic called “bait and switch”, this is where you think the holiday is one price but ends up costing far more…
So what is Bait and switch? This is the dodgy practice of letting you book a cheap deal and then calling you or emailing you back to pay hidden extras, or mysteriosly the flights you thought you had booked at one price are suddenly more expensive..
But dont take our word for it, check it out yourself and have a read of just some of the: On the beach, complaints and reviews. below..
- Be advised that they OTbeach – OntheBeach.co.uk, do not offer live online booking. See T&c below.
- It may appear to be the case, but it is not, You are just making an offer to purchase, which is not the same thing at all..
- Holidaymakers like yourself have found this out to their cost. Scroll down and read their t&C below.
If you are contacted by Onthebeach after your booking (we hope you don’t book) but if you do and they ask for more money – Do not accept the higher price and inform your credit card or debit card bank for an immediate charge-back refund..
Here are just some of the reviews of “on the beach holidays”. From Review center.
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“Don’t even think about booking your holiday with Onthebeach.co.uk.
They lure you in with cheap deals and then surcharge you to the point where it was cheaper to book direct. Their holidays are not protected as packages and any changes attract huge surcharges.
Customer service is non-existent and ABTA protection amounts to nothing because all their dodgy business practices are in their Terms and Conditions. Dont event think about using Onthebeach…. Read Review
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“Appalling customer service from On the beach holidays.
Misleading website causing mis-sold holidays with little or no help from customer service apart from attempting to levy a ‘admin’ fee for any cancellations.” Read more.
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“We have had nothing but problems with the ‘On the Beach’ and would not recommend them.
We booked B&B accomodation and were sent a confirmation saying Self Catering and after numerous emails and calls they refuse to believe the booking is an error. ” Read More
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- Take a moment to read the otbeach terms and conditions and see how they try and lock you in, they assume that you will not read them but you should, as they are some of the worst we have come across. Especially read the section we have highlighted with a thumbs down…
Part of : OTbeach on the beach holidays terms online booking.
By clicking to book and entering your personal and payment details on our website, you are making us an offer to purchase the product on your behalf.
At this point we immediately re-contact the Principal. Each Principal will still require a short period of time to confirm that your chosen flight / hotel is still available.
Although the email confirmation sent to you is NOT contractual acceptance of the Principal’s ability to provide this product, it is an acknowledgement that we have received your offer, and should the product be available as detailed on our website then you have entered into a legally binding agreement to purchase this product subject to the Principal’s Terms and Conditions.
You should also note that each service you book with us is a separate booking.
If you make bookings for both accommodation and flights and we are unable to confirm one of the bookings, the other booking will still stand, and therefore the Principal’s booking conditions will apply.
THIS MEANS THEY WILL TRY AND STICK YOU WITH EITHER THE FLIGHTS OR THE ACCOMMODATION AND CHARGE YOU IF YOU TRY AND CANCEL – do not accept this…
If larger groups want to be sure of sufficient availability for any flights / hotels they should contact our call centre. If two parts of the same group book online on two separate bookings and availability expires between the two bookings we regret therefore that we are unable to cancel the first booking without applying cancellation charges as levied by the Principal.
The bulk of the "On the beach complaints" concern - Persistent call backs after you think you have booked online to ask for more, huge extra cost surcharges. Extremely poor customer service .
This ‘Bait & Switch’ theory that keeps coming up is really so far from the truth it’s unreal. We spend a lot of money on online and offline marketing campaigns and it is vital to us that we are able to book the holidays at the advertised prices for people who do place orders on our site. Otherwise we waste lots of money to get people there.
Logic suggests if we were doing the “bait & switch” as its been christened by another forum we would lose much more in advertising costs than what we could possibly make by increasing every or even some of the holiday prices that we show on our site.
If anyone is interested in the real reason, even though it’s not as exciting as the “bait & switch” theory it is all to do with incorrect third party data supplied to us by the providers we use on our website.
Everyone concerned in travel tries to ensure the feeds between the companies are correct, however at times unfortunately they get it wrong. In 99.9% of cases, the price you see is the price you pay.
In the small number of cases where the information given by our third party provider is incorrect and there are any changes to the final price, our customers are notified and a free of charge cancellation is available should the customer not wish to proceed with the booking..
Looking at the ReviewCenter website, people are able to go onto a website and post negative comments about our company and more often than not, these are posted by people who are not our customers. Many people who have very good experiences are often very reluctant to leave a good review as that is what is expected from a holiday. We send over 750,000 happy customers away every year, and if asked to leave posts, it would paint a very different picture.
As most forums state in their Terms, people should give us a chance to deal with any complaints before going on sites such as these. Even if they are not happy with the outcome they still have the official avenues of appeal open to them.
Posted by On the Beach | May 25, 2010, 10:52 amIn the interest of fairness we have allowed ON the beach to comment.
However they did not address the majority of the issues such as poor customer service, and or problems with bookings.. Customers being overcharged that sort of thing.
They also claim that satisfied customers do not leave comments or reviews that is not true either, but we let them have there say..
Posted by travel-travel | May 25, 2010, 10:51 amThanks travel-travel for allowing us the opportunity to respond. Review Centre is a fairly unique website in that you cannot respond to people comments only post reviews. This means it is difficult for On the Beach to have a presence.
Those of you who are familiar with other review/forum sites where responses are possible, will see On the Beach has a strong presence, indeed much stronger than many of our competitors.
We actively seek to identify customers who have used these sites to voice their opinions. We respond and contact them offline to try to resolve their problem or answer their query.
One point we would like to make in reference to Review Centre is that you can search any large travel agent or tour operator with a similar amount of reviews and customers to On the Beach and you will see a common theme. All scores are low and in fact On the Beach scores higher than some of the larger travel companies.
However, this does not make bad customer service or unhappy customers acceptable. On the Beach has grown quickly and many changes have been made to our departments and processes continuously over the course of this time. We are fully committed to putting our customers first and based on customer feedback we are in the process of making a multitude of internal changes that will improve areas of present dissatisfaction.
Finally, we do carry over 750,000 passengers a year. We thank you for highlighting the out of date 2009 information on our website, we will of course update this as soon as possible. We have many phone calls and emails to answer every day.
Posted by On the Beach | May 25, 2010, 3:57 pm