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Tried to make this short and concise, but its a long story Mr and Mrs A are neighbours to Mr and Mrs E and their 17 year old son. Normally they dont go on holiday at the same time as they "house sit" for the other, but this year they decided they would both go at same time as I was going to house sit for them both Mr A finds an all inclusive holiday in Costa Brava for 7 days at £325 per person, he phones to book using credit card and specifies it is for 2 seperate families, and they want seperate rooms but at the same hotel - he explains they are neighbours and all seems fine on the booking part. Paperwork arrives and it specifies "2 units" which is good as they definately need 2 seperate rooms. Shortly before holiday, due to Middle East problem (mid July) their original plane is stuck in Lebanon or somewhere, so flight is shifted to another company and a later time on same date... so instead of 8pm sat night its 11.55pm sat night, ok they accept that and on the day the flight boarding is delayed and they take off at 2:15am. So they are no longer arriving at their hotel at midnight as originally booked, but actually get there at 6:30am Sunday morning (they have effectively lost one night of their 7 night holiday now). Hotel Porter shows them to room on top floor where the ceiling brushes Mrs E's hair and she is the shortest in the party at 5 feet tall, the remainder all have to stoop to get into the room.... they reject that immediately as unsuitable and ask for a different room, and at this point they are told by the porter that room was for both parties, and he was expecting to see a family of 5 with children. They then have to wait until receptionist arrives, and at around 8am they are then told the hotel is overbooked and they have been allocated one "apartment with 2 bedrooms" instead of the 2 seperate rooms they have booked, and since they are overbooked they dont have a second room for the other family. At this point more people start arriving to check in and they are offered a swap with someone who hasnt checked in yet to the 4th floor which at least isnt as low a ceiling, but only if they accept it there and then. Reluctantly they take the room between them and go to try and get some rest / sleep until the hotel manager is back apparently sunday afternoon. He never arrived, no rep can be contacted on site as apparently they dont work sundays or have any contact method at all. I am in the UK and I manage to get through to Sunways booking on the sunday morning and ask questions, they can confirm that it was a booking for 2 families in seperate rooms but the person on the phone cant do anything as he is only empowered to take booking and not deal with resort problems which he says contact rep for. Monday in UK I am phoning both Holiday City and Sunways to get them to sort the rooms, they assure me someone is dealing with it right now and I will get a call back later that day when its sorted (i didnt get a call back). Monday in the hotel no manager appeared yet, no holiday rep .... monday afternoon a rep appears but apparently she can only take bookings for travel, she doesnt deal with complaints as thats a different person and they will be here the next day (tuesday). At this point the 2 families are still sharing an apartment, since the bookings were supposed to be for an apartment with one bedroom for each of the families, the family of 3 had thought that they would have the bedroom and their 17 year old son would have the apartment to sleep in, but now they are sharing it with another family thats hard to do and they are having to work out a rota for the 2 families to share the bathroom, toilets etc so as to try and cope until the reps appear. Onto Tuesday morning, Mr and Mrs A plan a day out in Barcelona and leave early, the E family are on their way out for their day out on the beach and town when a phone call comes for Mr A, so Mrs E takes it on their behalf. It was apparently someone in the UK from the holiday company but she didnt catch their name. The offer was to move hotels that day.. ie uproot and move to a completely different hotel they hadnt booked, which was actually impossible as they were on their way out, and the other family was already out so who was expected to pack for them ... or the other option was that the following day (weds) they could move to different rooms in the same hotel. Mrs E pointed out the initial problem of the room with no headroom and wanted assurance that one family would retain the room they had and the other would be moved to a room which was not the one with no ceiling (I suspect they cant normally let that room out and it would be likely the only available room). The person on the phone said they couldnt guarantee the room number, and that they would both effectively check out and then check into new rooms, so not even keeping the one room they already had. Mrs E said thats totally unacceptable, they were only there until saturday anyway and so far they had lost one night of their holiday, they had spent 3 days and 2 nights sharing one apartment and now they were expected to spend another part day moving rooms around. No further offer was made and no other solution offered, the E family went out for the day and expected the A family to be contacted on their return form Barcelona (they werent) I phoned sunways / holiday city tuesday midday and was told the problem was sorted now, so I took it as read that it was without any more expensive mobile phone calls to Spain to confirm or check. No one mentioned anything at the hotel the next morning about moving rooms, no offer of rooms was made again, no holiday rep turned up at all from then until they checked out saturday and went home. Back home the details were mailed to Holiday City, they passed it onto Sunways, so far Sunways admit there was an error and there should have been 2 seperate apartments. They also say that in not accepting the hotel move on the tuesday (they claim it was a higher spec hotel but no one mentioned any upgrade on the phone that day) and further not accepting the room move offered on the wednesday (it wasnt, they offered it to Mrs E by phone on tuesday as a take it or leave it) that the families have made the situation worst. As a result they are offering £50 per person compensation, ie £250 for a holiday costing over £1600. The points I want to cover in the next letter are they have failed to provide what has been purchased and as such should refund in full, but I suspect thats asking too much. I intend to copy in the credit card company in the next letter to HC / Sunways since it was paid by CC but I need to some expert opinions on where they stand, and what sort of level of compensation they should be expecting. Sorry for the novel, but trying to cover all the details to save anyne asking for more info

OK thats great thanks, I think I will start going to draft out my letters now and once I have submitted them I will start a new thread in the Abbey area to detail how I get on I actually figured it would be pointless, I might end up taking my bank to task for a few thousand pounds in bank charges only to have to then pay it back to them as part of the compensation for money I owe them, and the same for the credit cards. In a way if they hadnt charged me quite so many fees, maybe I wouldnt have been in this situation but then again hindsight is a wonderful thing. I am just going to make sure I dont get caught in that position again in the future.

OK, these might not be FAQs, but they are questions I wanted to ask so maybe someone else has considered asking similar as well. My first question, can you only claim for charges already incurred? The reason I ask is I have an Abbey Basic account and have had a £35 unpaid DD fee for Jan, Feb and Mar 2006, and so far they have charged for the Jan one in Feb, and then the Feb one in March, but do i have to wait until April when they charge me for the March one before going ahead with my letter? The second question and I suspect i know the answer to this but its worth asking As a bankrupt person (personal not a company) in the past I had fairly excessive bank charges levied on me by not only my bank but credit cards too. Since the bankruptcy is meant to finally remove me from the penalty of having to pay all my creditors after I am discharged sometime later this year, does that also stop me from going down the route of trying to recover any of my unfair bank charges incurred in the past before I was declared bankrupt. Should I decide or be allowed to go that route, if I win any of those charges back do i then have to declare them to the Official Reciever so they can use the funds to repay any of my debts, or once the discharge is granted is that the end of it? Thanks in advance to anyone who has an opinion or legal thought on this.