About me:I wish I had more free time to spend on this site.
Member since:30.07.2002
Reviews:17
Members who trust:3
Review rated by 37 Ciao members on average: very helpful
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For those of you who have read my previous reviews you will now that I like holidays. Especially cheap holidays. I usually pick these up from teletext but last October my friend and I decided to try an auction site.
I surfed a few and eventually ended up on mytravel. co.uk. For anybody who doesn't know my travel used to be air tours. We decided on this site because we presumed that as it was air tours the holidays should be reasonable quality and there should be no problems.
The site itself is very easy to navigate. Once you arrive at the home page you click on the words auction. This brings up a list of the different auction on the left hand side of the page. There are many different ones usually catagorised by place. There is also a catagory of auctions that start at £1. Beside each catagory is a number. This is the number of auctions in each catagory. On the right hand side of the page is a list of the most popular auctions.
My friend and I had decided we wanted to try Lanzarotte for a change. We had never been there. I clicked on the catagory for £1. Always the optimist. Unfortunately there was nothing for Lanzarotte in there. There wasn't anything for £1 either. The cheapest holiday was already at £99 although the bidding had actually started at £1. There was a catagory for Lanzarotte so I clicked on that. At that time there was about 12 holidays on offer for Lanzarotte. These vary on a day to day basis because of the starting and finishing dates of the auction. The holidays on this web
site really are last minute deals. There was nothing that was going later than three weeks away.
The site is laid out very well. When I clicked on Lanzarotte it brought up the list of auctions. This shows the start date of the holiday, where to, whether self catering, half board, full board, star quality of hotel, departure airport, amount of people the holiday is for, the winning bid at that time and closing date of the auction. At first glance everything seems very cheap. The price you bid is the actual price of the holiday and not price per person. If you see anything you like you click on that and it brings up all the relevant information. This is also the screen you bid from. Most of these holidays are ones where apart from the country you do not know where you are going until you get there. But hey - thats half the fun of it.
I found a holiday for 2 from my local airport for 2 star self catering. The winning bid at that time was £99. I monitored this holiday for a couple of days and the holiday price stayed the same. Foolishly I thought that perhaps no one was interested because it was from a small airport. The auction finished on Wednesday morning at 10 am so the evening before I gathered up my courage and placed a bid. When you click on the place a bid button it takes you to a page where you must register. This is a fairly straightforward process. You have to register and give your email address. You also have to choose a name for yourself. This was the hard bit - everything I picked someone else had already picked before me. Eventually I managed to find something. You also have to register details of a credit card although it does state that no money will be deducted from your card unless you win an auction and have been notified. They need these card details first because it does say that if you bid and win an auction and then default on it your credit card will be debited £50.
I registered and completed all details and then went on to place a bid. There are two types of bids you can place. One is a normal bid which usually has to be £20 over the winning bid. The other is called a proxy bid. With this you bid more. The computer then bids on your behalf. It first enters a bid of £20 over the winning bid but everytime someone over bids you it ups your bid until it reaches the limit you specified. I placed a proxy bid of £200. The following morning before work I checked on the site and found I was still the winning bidder at £130. About 9.30 at work I managed to check it again and I was still the winning bidder. I sat back and waited to receive an email telling me I had a holiday. It did not come. What I had not realised was that no one really bids on this site till about 5 minutes before it closes and then everyone goes mad. We had lost this holiday.
Not to be put off I tried again. I found another holiday again from my local airport - this time it was 4 start half board and was again priced at £110.00 This auction finished at midnight. I stayed up and decided to fight. About 10 minutes before it closed I entered a proxy bid of £300 and monitored the auction. This is quite difficult as you have to keep refreshing the data to get the new information and even though I am on broadband it is not that quick. With about 3 mins to go someone overbid me. I did a quick check and put another proxy bid in of £450, having decided this was the most I was willing to pay for the holiday. I won the holiday for £390.
You have to remember that although I won the holiday for £390 this is not the actual amount you pay. You also have to pay a security charge of £9 per person. This is compulsory. There is also in flight meals (optional at £15 per person) and hotel transfers (again optional at £10 per person) But overall I still thought it was a fairly reasonable price for two people half board four star.
I recieved the email to say I had won and that I would be contacted by phone within the next 48 hours but it could be up to 5 days and not to contact them unless I heard nothing in the 5 days. They rang me at 11 the next morning. When they ring with the details they want to know about travel insurance. You either have to purchase their insurance at that time or if you have your own insurance then you must give them the policy number and insurer. Both my friend and I have our own annual travel insurance. Unfortunately at that time my friend was away and would not be back until the following day so I did not know her policy number although I knew who it was from. I asked if I could ring them the following day with the details. They refused. I though this was quite unfair as according to their information they could have rung me anytime in the 5 days. They were very strict about it and insisted that in the rules it says when they ring you must either give them the number or purchase their insurance. So I either had to purchase insurance for her or lose the holiday and the £50 default payment. I had to take out their insurance for her. This cost me about £18. They gave me a policy number for her and told me to pick up both her insurance policy and our tickets from the mytravel desk at the airport.
The tickets actually arrived by post two days later. When we got to the airport and went to the desk to pick up her policy we were told there was no actual paperwork necessary but to just remember the policy number and if we needed to use it then just quote the policy number. I was a bit worried about this but luckily we did not need to use it.
Everything turned out very well and we enjoyed the holiday immensely. When we got off the plane we spotted the mytravel rep immediately. We gave her our names and she told us which hotel we were going to and which coach to go to. It was very straightforward. When we got to our hotel we found that although we were supposed to be in a four star half board hotel it was actually all inclusive which made the holiday even better value. You can read my review on the hotel on Lanzarotte Bay Hotel at Costa Tequise, Lanzarotte.
To summarise the web site is easy to use and the holiday very good value. On the downside it is quite stressful having to bid at the last minute. Also the holidays are very last minute and being so the luggage allowance is only 15 kilos. I was also not impressed by the attitude of the girl on the phone regarding travel insurance or there being no actual paperwork for the insurance. However I would certainly use this site again for my holidays.
Please do not shout at me if some of my prices are now wrong as it was last year when I got this holiday from the site and I think things may have changed by now.
I'm still a bit hesitant about auctioning on the internet! Although I have travelled with MyTravel (formerly Airtours) and they were always brilliant. Julia
15.01.2005 19:45
A well written review x
02.04.2004 16:06
I'm still a bit hesitant about auctioning on the internet! Although I have travelled with MyTravel (formerly Airtours) and they were always brilliant. Julia
22.03.2004 14:57
This sounds like a site I should investigate. Cheers, Jan