My customer service experience with AJ Travel was a horrible experience. My wife and I are in the Air Force and stationed in the San Antonio area. We have saved up for this dream vacation for years and AJ Travel took advantage of the situation. Not only was our travel agent hard to get a hold of and very informative, the owner of AJ travel is very unwilling to resolve our complaints or return my e-mails. Here's a transcript of the e-mails between me and the owner of AJ Travel:\r
Sandra, \r
My wife and I just returned from our honeymoon vacation in New Zealand. I must say that I'm quite displeased with the service that we received from AJ Travel. Service started off so well from Laurene and that's why we chose AJ Travel, but unfortunately this service degraded after we made our deposit for this vacation. After that, she was unresponsive and difficult to get a hold of. I understand that she may have had some medical issues, but that doesn't mean that another AJ Travel represetative couldn't assist us with answering our questions. I was also unsatisfied with the amount of information we were given for our trip. Other agencies that I've used in the past would provide weather information, additional activities, baggage weight limits, and much more. They even go as far as to set-up a personalized web page to access this type of information in addition to the detailed itinerary. \r
I've been in Afghanistan since last year and this was a very special vacation and well deserved vacation for the two of us. My wife is Active Duty Air Force this was a promotion celebration in addition to our honeymoon. I made it real clear in the begining that we only wanted to stay at the highest quality hotels. I was disappointed with the quality of hotels that were booked by your agency. Matter of fact, I had to pay for room upgrades at majority of the hotels because the reserved rooms were not up to par. In one occasion in Christchurch, we completely left a motel because of it's substandard conditions (room/location). We immediately called a cab after we saw the room and had them take us to the nearest hotel. \r
The location of most hotels were not optimal for sightseeing or dining out. In Rotorua, we had to pay $10 for a one way trip into town to shop or eat. That adds up when we are going into town several times a day during our three day stay. In Franz Josef, we were booked at a lodge outside of town in a town with no taxi service. We were dropped off late at the lodge and they had no food available. Were were not able to eat that evening because it was a 30 minute walk into town in heavy rain in 32 degree weather. In Wanaka, we were put at a resort outside the city. Taxi service was $15 one way into town. That also gets expensive when making several trips into town over a 3 day period. I was also upset with the location of our resort in Wanaka because it was too far from the ski slopes. It would have been better to stay in Queenstown because the ski slopes are the same distance as it is from Wanaka. \r
I will point out that my biggest complaint of this whole trip was having to upgrade the rooms, but most of all was time time in Christchurch when we had to leave the motel and go to a hotel. I found it hard to believe that your travel agency would have booked a location like that. I spent nearly $8,000.00 on this vacation and I was beyond belief when we were dropped off at that motel from the airport. \r
Of course there were many positive aspects of this trip, but it's hard to mention them when there were so many negative things to point out. There were hotels that I did like, there were locations I enjoyed, and there were many excursions that we will never forget. I will be more than happy to point out the good and the bad in person if you would like to meet and talk about it. I just wanted to take the time to explain our experience because I'm sure your team can benefit from this feedback to better support future customers.\r
Respectfully,\r
JJJJ\r
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