Fred. Holidays Reviews 17

I have found Fred holudays

We recently went to Vietnam and Cambodia with Fred Holidays. We were contacted by our host Claire the week before travel, and the trip was great. She came to find us on the plane to check everything was ok and to introduce herself in person. Everything went smoothly, from transfers, to lovely hotels, and of course on the beautiful Pandaw Mekong. Excursions were all organised, which is reassuring and great to know you don't have to worry and organise yourself! I would highly recommend this to people who want to discover the classic untouched banks of the Mekong, as well as people who like the security of a group.

My wife and I have just returned from a Vietnam and Cambodia Cruise organised by Fred Holidays and using Pandaw Cruises. We booked our holiday via Hays Travel and it all worked very smoothly. Shocked at the poor reviews for Fred Holidays as our experience was the polar opposite with Organisation that was second to none. We even had our own Fred Holidays Rep’, Claire, accompany us on the entire holiday which was excellent.

We would have no hesitation in recommending Fred Holidays and Pandaw and indeed have already done so to friends and family. If we could go again tomorrow, we would.

booked my holiday with fred holidays using Paula of dawson and sanderson travel agency she was first class and any queries were dealt with promptly
The holiday was well organised from begining to end before the holiday commenced we were contacted by Claire our holiday representative from Fred Holidays she introduced her self and also met us on the plane this attention to detail continued through out a very well organised and thoroughly enjoyable holiday to vietnam and cambodia

If i could start with saying i would not even give this company a 1 star but it would not let me proceed without it.
PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY they are dreadfully incompetent in every aspect of their way of dealing with clients, they completely ignore e mails, charged us for breakfasts,transfers that were not required ordered us vegetarian meals on the plane which we did not want, was never given the choice, dates and details wrong on our invoices , they are the worst company i have ever had the misfortune to deal with, i am currently trying to get through on the phone and at this minute i have been waiting 41 minutes and still no answer, i think its safe to say i would never travel anywhere with this company again, oh i wish i had read trustpilot reviews before booking, but you live and learn as they say, so please please take heed of the reviews are they are all true BEWARE STAY AWAY and just as i was about to submit this review they hung up on my telephone call how professional is that ????

After dealing with Fred. Olsen’s refusal to honour what we were told at booking — and their total lack of interest in reviewing recorded calls — it’s no surprise their reviews are overwhelmingly 1–2 stars
£1000 to add a baby to a 7 day holiday after advising at booking it would be no more than £300.
And now they don’t care about what they said. You can see from these reviews they don’t care about customer service once they have your money!
I would never use this company again and advise other to consider wisely

I wished I had seen these reviews before I booked my holiday with hays travel in Basingstoke.. my tickets for my irtenary cane just few days before leaving. My tickets to pisa cathedral was promised to come to my phone 24 hours before viewing which seemed strange to me. This did not happen and on calling hays from there they were looking into it. Got all emails from hays and Fred holidays they are looking into this matter and apologies. I had to purchase my tickets on my credit card again.
On arriving back I lodged a complaint whereby hays manager said they will never use Fred holidays again. How stupid was I as to believe this.
As they have been using them even after so many complaints.
I paid them 80 pounds for my 2 ti kets for pisa cathedral and they are going to refund me 55 pounds.
Just wait ✋️ it has been 10 weeks I am still waiting for refund. It is a joke.
Please use trailfinder as your holiday as it would be cheaper and amazing holiday. You won't be conned. I will stick to TRAILFINDER for mu future holiday.

Fred’s recently provided us with one the most stressful holiday I’ve ever had.
We arrived at our first hotel in Switzerland around 7pm after a flight and three trains rides to find that they had booked it for exactly a year in the future! It then turned out that they’d done the same thing with our third hotel!!
As it was late we couldn’t call our travel agent, Hays, and it was thanks to the kindness of the hotel receptionist that we found accommodation for that first night.
We then of course had to find last minute accommodation ourselves for the remaining five nights. Not what you want to be doing on what should’ve been a carefully planned holiday. Switzerland is not a cheap country to be doing this in either.
They reimbursed us for the cost of the alternative accommodation we found but kept the money we had originally paid for the two hotels booked for 2026 thereby making very little difference to them cost wise.
We haven’t received any letter of apology or any offer of compensation even though Hays chased them up on this.
Having read many other bad reviews about this company I am astounded that they are still functioning and shocked that travel agencies are still trusting them.

I am a travel agent and will NEVER BOOK my customers on a Fred Holiday again. It took 2 weeks for us just to get the confirmation email (tour operator confirmations are either instant or within a couple of hours of booking, 2 weeks is unbelievable!) My customer had a number of queries on their booking, getting information from their 'customer services' was like getting blood from a stone. I have spent weeks chasing up on things that were 'leave it with me and I'll get back to you', Never to be heard from again.
I had to chase 4x for my customers tickets to be sent, when the came through there were parts missing. They leave in 5 days and I am STILL chasing for all the tickets.
Never again! I have thrown their brochures in the bin so I never have to deal with this company again.

Just returned from cruise to Norway on the Balmoral. Extortionate prices. Even with drinks package, we had to pay £3 for water, tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. WiFi was £63 per week. Also I was told to keep weight of each piece of luggage under 20kg. Fair enough I took a suitcase and an overnight bag. This was OK going, both were taken on board. However on return they would only take case off, so at 81 yrs old with mobility problems, I had to struggle off with the overnight bag. Can't fault the food and staff, but everything else was awful. In my opinion ship was too small to cater for amount of people. Had to struggle for seats in all of the lounges. During 4 days at sea, there was really nothing to do. Would never cruise with them again. It was so disappointing.

To say this company is incompetent is an understatement. We booked a rail journey with them and it is the last time I will have anything to do with them. They failed to check our documents which proved to be full of quite serious errors and in rectifying their errors we incurred some expenses. Surprise, surprise, they refuse to reimburse us. Our correspondence with them has proved to contain errors (falsehoods!) which they haven’t acknowledged.

Fred Olsen is the Ryan Air of cruising with extortionate prices for what they see as extras. Water in cabin £3, WiFi £12 per day. NO complimentary drinks - water tea and coffee only things included. I don't drink so there 'drinks package' would be a waste, but never been on a cruise where you had to pay for juice! NO included excursions and they wanted to charge over £150 for a 'land/Sea' trip which I managed to arrange for under £50.
I paid £1700 single supplement for a sea view cabin which had an external staircase right across the window! Fortunately the lovely guest services managed to move me, and they actually took photos when I pointed out how shabby the original cabin was.
The entertainment was more AM Dram than Broadway and the only reason it's not a 1* review is that the actual ship and the crew were lovely. But very bad value for money and won't be travelling with Fred Olsen again.

Thank you so much Julienne for your review.
I have never booked a river cruise with Fred Holidays, I never got the opportunity. We are two mature, very experienced international travelers. Was looking forward to a river cruise with Pandaw. Decided to approach Fred Holidays to arrange a tailor made, to India and Bhutan, to include flights and extra nights in Darjeeling. I have emailed this company numerous times with our itinerary, phoned many times to be left hanging on, one time over 30 minutes. Much to our disappointment, never had any contact from them. After reading your experience I will not bother again. Julienne, you have just saved us £20,000. Thank you, happy travels in the future with a reliable company. Jan.

2 cruises in two months, 1st cruise satisfactory, 2nd one , discovered husband’s wallet with a substantial amount of money had disappeared from cabin. Every nook and cranny had been searched over and over again while we were packing to go home. Security were called in and after a 45 min search nothing was found. Actually needless to say no more cruises with them for us. Not with a thief on board.

We were due to fly out from Heathrow on 30 June 22 to go on an Amadeus German River cruise . Flight was cancelled by BA, Amadeus would not book us on an alternative flight - said we had to sort it ourselves! We booked an alternative flight to a different airport for later the same day but from Gatwick. We incurred travel cost to Gatwick, flight cost,overnight hotel cost and then a train the next day so that we could catch up with the cruise at its first port of call.10 months on and we haven't had a penny back!

Through my travel agent 'Fred' organized a tailor made rail trip in Sweden. It was paid in full in May - for 12th - 25th August 2022. I was told tickets would be available 7 - 10 days before departure...but nothing arrived!
Both the travel agents and myself kept checking. FRED had the same excuse - they kept blaming the rail company in Sweden - not returning calls or sending documents.I contacted both them and Fred myself.
- ' Fred ' had not paid them so they couldnt issue the documents.They did at 4pm 10th August!!! I had a 40 miles round trip early on 11th to collect them.My flight was 9.30 am on the 12th.- I have contacted the company about this terrible experience - Never will I use them again.

Fred holidays organised our holiday including a 7 night cruise with American Queen Steamboat company. We booked this once in a lifetime holiday in January 2020 but for obvious reasons it was postponed until April this year. Just after we booked, we had a bit of money left to us so we said we wanted to add one extra night to the beginning and end of our journey. They then decided to add £7,000 to the price, without consultation or explanation, which took the final cost to a massive £18,000! Like many people, we were desperate for a holiday after loosing two people who meant the world to us, we really needed a break. The holiday was horrendous from start to finish, with pre booked private cars to transport us to the various parts of the holiday, the food on board the ship was dreadful, the “entertainment” which was listed as Broadway worthy, was severely disappointing and no-where near what we were told to expect. We had two days of cancelled flights home, which resulted in my Husband not being given his passport back in the terrible confusion after the second cancellation, so we had to stay another week in a hotel, at our own cost. I have since priced the exact same holiday for July 2022 and guess what, the price was just a little over the price we were given in 2020! Even though I have given these figures to Fred Holidays, they have refused to justify the increase to us, saying we bought a package holiday, so we don’t get a breakdown. I thought a package holiday was organised completely and a set price given, not one where you can pick and choose where you stay and for how long? This company couldn’t organise their way out of a wet paper bag, never mind a bespoke holiday, which they say they’re experts at. We will never use this company again and I am telling everyone not to touch them with a barge pole. I have so far written to Rip-off-Britain at the BBC and am in the process of taking legal action.

Fred.\Holidays, Fred.\River Cruises are part of the same Fred Olson group of companies. There is no facility I could find on Trust pilot to review Fred.\Holidays River Cruises. I presume you can all book the same holidays/cruises, as such my review of the company stands, we have still been ripped off by Fred Olson and been on the worst holiday ever, without the luxury we were promised and forced to pay an extra £7.000 for the privilege.

I wonder why, if my review is the only one on trust pilot for Fred.\ they have got 3 stars, when I only gave them one and wouldn't have given them that one If I could get away with zero!