Best At Travel
reviews and complaints

Arrived this morning no twin bed ocean view room. Upgraded to suite but second bed is small zed bed. Other bed is upstairs on mezzanine with no bathroom facilities which are down stairs so if my friend wants toilet in night she has to tu4n lights on wake me up or break her neck by not turning lights on.
We have lost a day of our holiday as they have overbooked,
They have offered another room which balcony overlooking the road. We paid for club ocean room.
Our holiday is ruined from the start.
We have asked to be transferred to another hotel but they will not.
She is telling us that the road side is ocean view and the other side which we want is a sea view!
Please help us.
Booking reference under name of Jayne Gatrell ref 230424 highly recommended by Anjam
Please get back to us ASAP.

I am sorry to be in the poison of having to complain with regard to communication with our personal travel agent which has been less than acceptable . I have a holiday booked 22 September to Cyprus however due to experiencing covid pneumonia resulting in hospital admission and after affects I have been advised by GP that it is not medically able to travel at this time .

I have contacted my personal travel agent to request holiday to be postponed until next year numerous times over since 2nd august to request holiday to be post phoned until next year.

However have been advised since 2 August(from travel agent) "still not heard from hotel if can postpone holiday" .

As you can appreciate I am becoming extremely concerned due to the brevity of time and 22 September is now only 3 weeks away and still no confirmation that holiday can be rearranged.

I have paid in cash £2500 for this holiday planned September 2020 which unfortunately had to be postponed (jest 3 grounded planes) . Myself and my wife had rebooked it for 22 September and were excited about having this holiday and devastated about contracting covid pneumonia compounded by long term impact of the disease which results in being impossible to go.

Your urgent support in addressing this situation is appreciated.
Kind regards
Andy Gallagher
personal agent: Doreen Derozario

We have booked and paid in full for our holiday due to be taken last April, we have never been contacted by Best at travel, we had to phone them as the country had gone into lockdown, they did not offer a refund, only reschedule or vouchers, we rescheduled for ten and a half months later. Six months later we were advised by Ethiad that the flights had been cancelled, I again rang best at travel, they again refused us a refund, this time we insisted threatening then with legal action, they eventually, after many emails back and forth offered a refund but the wait was five months away, we agreed, it is now time for the said refund and guess what... It hasn't happened, I emailed them last week to check all was on track, to be told it was, now they are saying there is another delay

If you haven't already booked with them DONT! If you have then be prepared for the following...

Will try to communicate via phone so there is no evidence of their lies.

Will not reply to emails.

Persuade you via the phone to cancel holiday and go through insurance knowing insurance won't cover package holidays and that [protected]@T cancellation policy is 100% of cost meaning no money for you.

Wont offer refund or credit note just rebook holiday for next year (and I very much doubt they will be in business is you see all the complaints on other review sites.

If you try to claim through credit card they will fight this tooth and nail.

If you unsuccessful with your bank and go back to [protected]@T for a refund they will stall and tell you that your bank has open case even though it's the merchant that is responsible for closing the case.

Will not reply to emails.

They are basically stealing money from people at a time when the world is going through a pandemic.

My advice to you is to start your complaint with ABTA now and also lodge complaint with CMA.

Also please contact any other organisation you think might be able to help and spread awareness of this dreadful company and write reviews of your own experience with them.

I had booked a holiday last year to St Lucia. Due to COVID the hotel contacted me to say they were closing. This was in March. No word from best at travel till I contacted them. My agent who I booked with Robert was helpful but asked customer care to contact me. I was due to fly on Friday 22nd May and I still haven't heard from them. Robert offered to rebook but I want to explore my options and also due to changes in circumstances ideally want a refund. They are refusing to give me an official cancellation invoice and was told that any refunds wouldn't be till next year.

You cannot get through by phone.

We have had our holiday cancelled because of Corona 19 Virus.
Best at Travel are not communicating, sending out generic e-mails. Not giving out refunds as per ABTA / PTR.

We have been asking for our money to be refunded. They are refusing, using ABTA as excuse, offering a credit note not ABTA backed their own. They had not paid our hotel and they cancelled it. But will only refund our money after 1/2/2021 and even then we have to apply.

This company are keeping consumers money to back their business.

Other consumers beware of Best at Travel as we used them for years since 2008 but never again they are very in trustworthy and unprofessional with arrogant staff.

Stay well clear this review 24/4/2020.

This is the first time we have booked with BestAtTravel and the whole experience has been disappointing and stressful. We booked two family rooms at the Radisson Blu Azuri Resort and Spa for 1 week in December and paid upfront for it last Friday. On Monday we got a call back saying there was an "error" on their website and that the rooms were not available. The agent claimed that they sourced the rooms from an "external company" and they no longer had them. He offered us alternative at Preskil Beach Resort which is a four start resort and not a five star unlike Radisson for the same price! On further checking on their website they actually still had the Radisson Blu Azuri Resort and Spa advertised but at a higher price (£900 more for each room). When confronted the agent he changed the story to that they did have the rooms but this was now the price this "external company" was asking for! The travel agent (Dharam Patel) who was dealing with our booking was arrogant and had unprofessional attitude from start to finish. Don't get me wrong we do understand things can go wrong with bookings however if a company was upfront, transparent and sympathetic I would not have been writing this review today. Due to the breakdown of trust we cancelled our booking from BestAtTravel and was told the refund won't be until 3 days after. I would recommend this company to consider changing their name as they certainly are not BEST AT TRAVEL!

After booking a holiday and paid £300 deposit l was told to pay the balance in two days by phone.When l tried to pay over phone, there was no one to pick the phone up whole day.When l called back next day they put the price up by £60 for late payment.I had no choice but to pay, since the booking agent said that its take it or leave it, and no refund of deposit.I had no choice but to pay.
So people please be aware of this back street tactics by this travel company [protected]@Travel.Will certainly not use them again, and will warn others too.

I wish I had found this site BEFORE I booked my holiday with BAT. I could have saved myself so much stress and money chasing them. The short story is that I booked late 2011 for a holiday in June 2012 to Cuba. Straight away I had to chase for a confirmation and invoice. As a condition of booking I asked for the tickets to be posted to me in Portugal but was told they could only be sent to the UK address where my credit card was registered. It was agreed that my tickets would be sent 1 month before departure to give my family in the UK time to post the tickets on. One month before I reminded them by email and phone and was assured the tickets were on the way. After many more phone calls and emails they were finally delivered by courier to our Gatwick hotel the night before departure. Imagine the stress that caused.

The main reason given was that they had run out of visas for Cuba and when they asked for more from the Cuban Embassy were told that the person responsible for issuing visas was on holiday. What incompetence on the part of the BAT admin team in not realising the number of forward bookings they had and not ensuring that they had enough visa to cover. I am sorry but I have doubts about the other part of their excuse regarding the embassy. A Cuban visa is a preprinted form that has to be completed by the holidaymaker. Surely this can be issued by any member of staff.

I totally agree with previous reviewers that the staff at BAT are only interested in taking your money. After that you are on your own. I made many requests to speak to a manager who it seems was always 'out'. Perhaps if he were to spend more time in the office he could manage his staff more efficiently. He did eventually email me the day before departure saying that he was investigating my situation and would ring me later that day. Twenty days later and I am still waiting for his call.

We did meet one other couple on holiday who had also booked with BAT. They also did not receive their tickets in a timely manner and as he worked in London he says that he installed himself in their office and refused to leave until his tickets were handed over.

Please, PLEASE think twice before dealing with this company.

We found BestAtTravel via Google and their prices were very competitive. At the time we were having trouble finding availability for the trip we wanted, on the particular dates, and at the specific hotel so we were very keen to get in touch with them.

On the Wednesday afternoon my wife phoned them to book the holiday, we were told at the time that our credit card would be pre-authorised for the full amount of the holiday, but the money would not actually be taken until the trip was confirmed. They would contact the resort to confirm the booking, and then they would get back in touch with us.

On the Thursday we had not heard back from them so my wife called. In the meantime another company had come up with availability for a similar trip. On speaking to BestAtTravel, we were told by their salesperson that the hotel was unfortunately not available and so they tried to offer us alternatives – none of which were suitable. We told them about the offer from the other company, at which point my wife was told that the offer was not possible, and that she must by lying! She ended the conversation after speaking with a manager called Anjam (not sure this is the correct spelling), who told us the pre-authorisation would be removed from our credit card.

We then went back to the second company and tried to book the holiday through them, only to be told that the credit card did not have sufficient funds on it. By this time it was late in the day so we could not get back in touch with BestAtTravel to ask what was going on. The second company offered to hold the holiday for us until the following Wednesday.

First thing on the Friday morning we were back in touch with them, and we were told that it could take a day or two for the pre-authorisation to be removed, so we decided we had no choice but to wait and see what happened. My wife was told that the pre-authorisation had definitely been reverted, at about 6pm on the Thursday.

On the Saturday I phoned my bank to see the state of my credit card and the pre-authorisation as the funds were still not available to us. To my amazement I was told that it had not been pre-authorised, but the full amount of the holiday had actually been taken by BestAtTravel on the Wednesday – without them actually providing us with a holiday! I told the bank that the money had been taken fraudulently (as I had not been given any services or goods), but they explained that I needed to speak to the company first to ask for a refund.

I immediately phoned them and spoke to a very helpful lady called Olivia, and she explained that in error, they had misread an email from the resort which arrived on the Wednesday, and the card had been charged by mistake. Their accounts department were closed until Monday so she could not confirm when the refund had been made to my account. I asked for a manager to call us back on the Monday after explaining my anger to them.

On the Monday (after my wife had to call them), she again spoke to Anjam the manager who at this point again started insisting that they had not taken the money from us. She spent 5 minutes arguing this point with them and being told that she was wrong! He then turned over the page of a document he was looking at (possible the manifest from the credit card machine) and found the evidence that they had indeed actually taken the money. At this point, my wife was told that the credit card was then re-credited with money. (I still can’t confirm this as it is now Tuesday).

My complaint with the company is twofold:-

(i) They made the mistake in the first place and took our money, this is quite poor, but I understand that mistakes can be made, however…
(ii) we were lied to on the Thursday when we were told that the ‘pre-authorisation’ has been removed –they knew at that time that the money had in fact been taken from us,
(iii) If the money does not reach us by Wednesday they will be responsible for us losing the other holiday.

(nb: it is now Wednesday, and we have lost our holiday due to the money not having been refunded yet).

Given the state of communications within their own company, and the attitude of the particularly argumentative, inept manager, I would recommend to everybody that they avoid this company like the plague.

A quality company would deal with complaints and grievances properly - probably without lying, in my experience this is not a quality company.