Poor service

I am extremely unhappy with the service received from AMI for my trip to Bali. AMI is rated as a 5 star company yet my experience does not even warrant a 1 star. This is the first time that I arranged all travel arrangements for an overseas trip by myself and AMI have made it a very stressful and traumatic experience to the point that I could not even enjoy my holiday.

I was promised to fly Emirates yet we flew Qatar both ways.

I paid for my tickets in advance, 23 May 2023 and only received my final tickets on the day that we were leaving which was 22 June 2023. This was despite constantly enquiring about ticket arrival multiple times. I was informed that they normally issue tickets 1 month in advance but that they were too busy to issue mine. Initially when I asked the travel agent if my tickets would be issued once I paid the full price, he said yes, yet what actually transpired was completely different.

The Travel agent would take days to respond with the excuse that he has over 400 clients. Please explain to me how this is the client’s problem considering that we did our research and were informed by the travel agent himself that they were a 5 star company with professional and top class service. We physically met with the travel agent before we booked with them and we were promised the world yet we received such pathetic service.

This is the sequence of departure and arrival dates and times that was sent which caused me an immense amount of stress and uncer*****y:

8 June received : 22 June 7: 10 pm departs and arrives 10:15 am on 4 July

I was requested to choose seats but never received my actual tickets despite various follow ups.

Then on the 22 June, our date of departure , times changed with 3 different sets of options none on what was initially agreed on.

Final time to depart 8 : 25 pm and arrive 2:45 am on 3 July which could be chosen from the 3 options. I was unhappy with the arrival time of 2 45 am back in Jhb as we would have lost 1 day. I was reassured that this would be sorted out.

On the 2 July I received arrival time back in JHB of 10 am.

I was not advised on travel insurance and when my mom enquired about this, she was told that if we travel we should know that? I was treated as if I was a world class traveller yet this was the first time that I was arranging my own trip. If I knew that travel insurance would be free when booking with an FNB card, I would have done so with my moms card and saved us plus minus R 3 500 which is a substantial amount of money.

I paid extra for a better hotel in Ubud. The travel agent took such a long time to book it, that by the time they needed to be booked, it was sold out for some reason even though that was the hotel that was included in the package that I paid for. I requested a price estimate of the original hotel so I could choose a new hotel however I never received that information and up to this day, I have not been reimbursed for the additional amount paid which was another substantial amount of around R 4 000 pp.the travel agent said that he would reimburse me for the difference yet I have heard nothing to date.

I was promised a shuttle service to and from the hotel. A few hours before we were supposed to leave the hotel to go home, I got a message saying that no shuttle services are available from their side and that I would need to book and pay for it myself.

The service received has been shocking to say the least. I would like a full refund of the total amount pp that I paid extra for a hotel that was not booked. I would also like to know what the role of a travel agent is if he cannot advise clients about important issues as to how to avoid paying for travel insurance?

Also, on a side note, they have a customer complaints email address that doesn’t exist