Initially, I liked the idea of receiving daily emails offering me deals in my home city of Leeds but last week I unsubscribed to every daily deal website simply because my inbox was full of beauty deals – nail painting, teeth whitening, I have had enough.

Lots of the daily deals aren’t in Leeds

I started to notice that a high percentage of the deals were not even in Leeds, yes, in neighbouring cities, but they were of no interest to me. Speaking with family and friends it seems I am not the only person who has had enough of the daily deals in my already spammed out email inbox.

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I don’t like it when consumers are not treated fairly, so I will help out any consumer who I feel has been let down by a company. This week I received an email regarding a flight booking issue, where the consumer, admitted their mistake of choosing ‘miss’ instead of ‘mr’ while booking flight and accommodation.

Simple error led to frustration

Initially, the passenger was asked to cancel the original flight, costing £519 and told to rebook, which would cost an additional £617. When the customer first contacted Travel Republic, a request to BMI was escalated and they were told that the airline would not make an exception to their policy.

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This issue has appeared in my email inbox a few times this month so I thought it was worthy of a rant. An airline changes the flight time and notifies the passenger via email. This is the only method of communication, no letter is sent or telephone call made to inform them that their flight time has changed.

Flight time changes

The passenger appears at the airport expecting to depart on the time on their tickets, to find that the flight has left some hours earlier and the holiday that they have spent all year saving for is ruined. Or the airline expects the passenger to rebook another flight and pay for the tickets again.

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You often read PR-led surveys in the national media which highlight popular holiday complaints but I wanted to find out what the real common complaints were amongst my readers, so, since April 2011 I have been logging details of the complaints received in my inbox from consumers.

I have received 486 holiday complaints in my inbox between April – August 2011.

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As a consumer who travels on a budget I have often stayed in hotels around Britain that are dirty beyond words. It does not matter how much you have spent on a hotel room, the minimum you should expect is a clean room.

Update: The lovely Carmen Roberts from BBC Fast Track has given my campaign to clean up British hotel rooms a mention on her latest programme. You can watch the video here. I have attempted to make more people aware of the campaign without much success so far.

No excuses for dirty hotel rooms

There are no excuses for a filthy, unhygienic hotel room and over the years writing this blog I have received various complaints from consumers where faeces were found round the edge of the toilet seat to the mattress in a room was so badly soiled that mold had begun to grow.

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