lastminute.com – Poor customer service

So I booked up a trip to Paris with last minute, got all the details through, everything looked really good. Lastminute.com were fast, the site was clean and professional, so far so good. Planned the trip out with my other half and made sure I’d followed all the instructions.
So I set a reminder in my calendar to confirm the flights and use BA.com’s natty check in service. The day arrived all too quickly, and my reminder went off, and here’s the crutch, I didn’t have my flight confirmation number with me at work to check the flights in. Lastminute didn’t provide it in their email correspondence, an oversight rather than a security measure, it was only provided during the sign up process which I fortunately printed and unfortunately left on my desk at home.

Simple enough I thought, I’ll ring them up and find out. Searched for 20 minutes to find Lastminute’s customer service number on their site and rang it. Pressed all the relevant buttons and went into the queue.

I spent over 1 hour (63 minutes) waiting for an advisor to answer the phone. Upon answer, I was dealt with abruptly and offloaded to another department, then onto another which I forget the name of, waited whilst the advisor conferred with a colleague and proceeded with a personal conversation about what she was having for lunch (she was skipping it because of her diet by the way). After this I was placed back in a queue, which I believe was the first queue as I waited another hour and a half.

During this time I sent them an email asking the same question, and after a further 94 minutes I had to go into a meeting and terminated the call.

On that basis, I rang lastminute.com’s number for a minimum of 2 hours
and 30 minutes at 10p per minute. This rates as 150 minutes, £15.

Now I’m not a great complainer, but £15 to get some information that should have been communicated in the first place is extortion. So I e-mailed (not telephoned!) them back with my concerns and a request for my cash back, here was their reply:

Thank you for taking the time to send us your comments.

It is always important for us to hear how customers respond to the
various offers listed on our website. Strong customer feedback like
yours helps us continue to improve the selection and service we provide, and we appreciate the time you took to write to us.

I can assure you that your comments have been noted to ensure that your
next experience of lastminute.com will be happier. However, we will not
be able to compensate you on this issue.

I apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Regards,

******
Customer Services Team
lastminute.com

In an age where customer service is becoming so critical because of the competition, you’d think they’d try a bit harder? I’m easy to please, a voucher or a £10 off my next holiday booking, anything would have placated me rather than “We’re sorry, but go whistle” .

Anyway, enough winging from me, my advice is use a different company, they’re all the same cost anyway. (Teletext is slightly cheaper).

Here are some people with similar opinions on lastminute.com, just a brief selection, but I found thousands, all with very negative opinions:

dooyoo – mixed reviews, but mainly bad
warming up

electric death

P.S. – I got the information via email 6 hours later, by which time I was home and had the number there. Paris was great as well, really enjoyed it.