Jenny Loeck of St. Paul booked a charter package through Hobbit Travel to Cancun in March. The charter package, put together by Funjet, included a room for two with balcony at the RIU Cancun, front and center in the Hotel Zone. They got into the hotel shortly before midnight, went out on the balcony to enjoy that spectacular ocean view, and discovered that the balcony door wouldn’t lock and that it was open to all the adjoining balconies on that floor. If you’ve been in Cancun during spring break season, you know that’s not a good situation. The front desk said the place was booked (so no room switch was possible), and that the lock couldn’t be fixed. When Loeck insisted on a fix, the hotel essentially nailed the balcony door shut (two days after she initially made the complaint).

Safe in her room, Loeck now was robbed of an amenity for which she’d paid dearly. Back at home, Loeck wrote letters, made calls, and after banging her head on many doors got Hobbit to secure a $249 refund (a check, not vouchers) from Funjet, the company that sold the vacation. I told her that was probably about as good as she was going to get, and that she made the right moves by seeking a fix right away and then pursuing it; if you don’t ask for help (or compensation) you won’t get it. It’s also commendable because it’s often hard to get any of the responsible parties in a charter package to be responsible. With the masses of people being moved, problems like this one inevitably crop up. Anybody out there who travels charter packages regularly have advice? Anyone had a similar experience with Funjet, Hobbit or RIU?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Cancun, charter packages. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.