Charlotte and I rarely go on package holidays, mainly because in the past we have planned long haul trips or have stayed in self-catering villas, but last October we journeyed into a brave new world by booking a package trip with Jet2holidays to Gran Canaria.

We have already reviewed the flight and the particular hotel we stayed at in Gran Canaria, but this review is about the customer service offered by Jet2holidays, which in our opinion was woeful and should act as a warning to anyone thinking of booking a package trip with this operator.

Before booking, we had actually found a hotel we preferred to the one we ultimately chose. However, according to the small print on the Jet2holidays booking pages, there was work being undertaken near the hotel that might have affected our stay. This was very helpful information to be given and we decided against booking this hotel, instead opting for the one we eventually stayed in.

Upon arriving at the hotel, we found out reasonably early on during our stay that work was being undertaken to improve the bar area by the main pool (which you can see in our pictures below). It is clear from our previous decision during the booking process that had we known about this work, we would have avoided the hotel.

Sadly, with a three month old baby to look after and various family members to meet up with during our stay, we failed to report this to Jet2 while we were there. It is worth pointing out that to do this, we would have had to have paid for internet usage or racked up a phone bill, since we never saw our rep at the hotel. We decided to just deal with the noise, not use the main pool area as much, not sit at the hotel bar/restaurant as much, and take it up with the holiday company upon our return.

When we got back to the UK, we informed Jet2holidays that we had been let down by the experience and felt that they had failed to live up to the ‘holidays you can trust’ part of their advertising. The response from Jet2holidays customer service was appalling. Trotting off some fabulous bits of ‘customer service language’, we were told how they were sorry we felt upset but essentially announced that they couldn’t care less because no other holidaymaker had complained about the issue and since we hadn’t mentioned it to them during our holiday our complaint was disregarded. As well as this, they seem to live in an age where they have to write to you in letter form, taking the full 21 days to write back and still failing to provide a sensible answer.

We emailed back saying that while we accepted the point that we should have raised the issue during our holiday, this wasn’t practical and it simply did not matter who else had complained; if we had felt aggrieved surely we had a right to express this! Since when are complaints and grievances disregarded just because nobody else has expressed similar opinions?!

This was especially true since we had provided photographic evidence of the building work and they also told us they had been in touch with the hotel, who had confirmed that work had indeed been taking place during our stay but they hadn’t updated their booking website. Great!

Having worked for about two years as a retail travel agent, I would never have given this kind of customer service. In fact, the company I worked for had a pledge that a £100 voucher was sent to customers if the holiday wasn’t perfect, such was the level of faith that we had when selling this sort of trip. Even Premier Inn have the perfect night sleep guarantee!

While Jet2holidays may on the whole offer smooth and easy package holidays, we simply won’t be using them again while their contempt for their customers continues like this.

Do feel free to share your experiences (good and bad!) about Jet2holidays in the comments below!