Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Will zufällig jemand am Montag nach Südafrika :)
Sigh.
So, about a month ago, two semi-regular customers of mine (for those who do not know, I own a travel agency as my day job) show up at my office, bitching about booking a South Africa tour that they saw on TV, and that just got cancelled because the tour operator couldn't generate enough bookings. No problem (I thought), and booked them on a tour with Meier's Weltreisen, Germanys largest distributor of tours of that kind. Well, two weeks ago, that got cancelled too. Not wanting to lose their business, I finally found them an alternative tour on www.elefant-tours.de, some random small german place that apparently sells tours like that too. After reading the 'detailed information' that is on the website, my customers booked that tour with me, which I then confirmed with Elefant Tours. However, the next day, they also read the 'additional information before you travel', which revealed that this is a tour where you can only take a small bag, one pair of shoes, six shirts, travel in a small group of like five people with local guides, sleep in tents part of the time, etc.. Sounds like an awesome tour to me, but not to my 60-year-old customers ! Anyway, they immediately inform both me and Elefant Tours that they will not accept this booking, to which Elefant Tours responds by claiming - Oh well, the legal obligation is with the travel agent anyway, oh and by the way cancellation costs a fee of 100%.
My lawyer says it could go either way and I don't really want to get stuck in a legal battle anyway, so i guess I will write this down as a €3200 losing session. If anyone wants to go on this tour that starts on June 6th for, say, €500 per Person (presuming i can get the names changed, airfare to Jo'burg and from Capetown not included and should run like €700 or so), let me know :)
So, about a month ago, two semi-regular customers of mine (for those who do not know, I own a travel agency as my day job) show up at my office, bitching about booking a South Africa tour that they saw on TV, and that just got cancelled because the tour operator couldn't generate enough bookings. No problem (I thought), and booked them on a tour with Meier's Weltreisen, Germanys largest distributor of tours of that kind. Well, two weeks ago, that got cancelled too. Not wanting to lose their business, I finally found them an alternative tour on www.elefant-tours.de, some random small german place that apparently sells tours like that too. After reading the 'detailed information' that is on the website, my customers booked that tour with me, which I then confirmed with Elefant Tours. However, the next day, they also read the 'additional information before you travel', which revealed that this is a tour where you can only take a small bag, one pair of shoes, six shirts, travel in a small group of like five people with local guides, sleep in tents part of the time, etc.. Sounds like an awesome tour to me, but not to my 60-year-old customers ! Anyway, they immediately inform both me and Elefant Tours that they will not accept this booking, to which Elefant Tours responds by claiming - Oh well, the legal obligation is with the travel agent anyway, oh and by the way cancellation costs a fee of 100%.
My lawyer says it could go either way and I don't really want to get stuck in a legal battle anyway, so i guess I will write this down as a €3200 losing session. If anyone wants to go on this tour that starts on June 6th for, say, €500 per Person (presuming i can get the names changed, airfare to Jo'burg and from Capetown not included and should run like €700 or so), let me know :)
# posted by dirkb : Wednesday, May 31, 2006
