As you all know I experienced bad service from five star tour.. One of my friend wrote an email complaint to five star and i quite impressed by their answer after an investigation was done.. We are not some idiots who will buy that kind of superficial answer.. Because of the crap reasons you give, we do not want you to continue following-up on this issue..


Below is what my friend wrote to them:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to express my dissatisfaction towards your service and it had brought much troubles to my friends and I during our holiday.

Together with another 3 friends, we booked a trip to Redang through your tour agency. At first, we were greeted warmly with your staff in your branch at People's Park Centre. However, things have changed after we returned to make payment for our trip. We were told by your staff that they are unable to accept our payment and that we had to return there another time because the staff (who is Jenny) who attended to us was on leave and the booking system was locked by her and that no one else had the access to the system. We found it unacceptable and one of your other staff then took over the matter and let us made the payment on the spot.

However, a few days went by and Jenny called us and told us that the resort which we intended to stay is actually fully-booked and insisted that we check in on the 15 July and leave on the 17 July. Despite telling her that we will not be able to make it on the 15, she still insist that we follow her arrangement. It was till we told her off, did she suggested other dates and another resort for us. As we all had to take leave from army or work, we asked her to shorten the process by letting us know by the following day, we were told that the WHOLE of Singapore is going Redang and that we had to wait longer for that. Apparently, when we got to Redang, we didn't see the WHOLE of Singapore there, rather, we didn't even see much Singaporeans around.

When the date is finalized, we went through the invoice and found out that the description for our resort room is actually under twin sharing and we were being charged $280, which we looked at the leaflet, it was the cost for twin sharing. We called up and they told us that Jenny had resigned and another of your staff, Danny took the call. He told us that it is alright for the description part to be wrong, as it was not important and that the cost of the tour is correct.

When we pressed on for a detailed explanation, as to why the description part was written wrongly, Danny actually told us off that we should not sound as if the company is cheating our money. He explained that it was a typo error which left us feeling puzzled as to how can someone type "TWIN" and "QUAD" wrongly when they have no characters in common except that they have the same number of letters. When we asked for a fresh invoice to be faxed over to us, your staff is unwillingly to do so and asked us to go down and collect it ourselves.

Furthermore, when we asked for the itinerary, we were not given and were asked to go and get it ourselves from the Redang Beach Resort website. However, when we reached Redang, did we realize that our itinerary is totally different from what was stated in the website and according to the staff at the resort, they said that it was because Five Star Travel Agency tend to leave the resort much earlier than the rest of the guests and were surprised why are we not informed about it.

The real nightmare starts when we crossed the borders of Singapore. The coach suddenly dropped us somewhere near the jetty at 6.30 a.m and the jetty was closed. Our ferry is at 9.30 a.m. Thus, we had to wait for another 3 hours for the ferry. We were not familiar with the place, we practically had to sit at the jetty door in the dark and wait till it is opened. When we finally reach Redang, we were told that we had to take the 6.30 a.m ferry on our departure date in order to be on time for our coach at 11.30 a.m. This means that we AGAIN had to wait for another 3 hours at the jetty for the coach. We would have appreciate that we were being informed of such arrangements beforehand, so that we can make some preparations beforehand.

Lastly, the coach wasn't at the place where we were asked to wait at. Or rather, there wasn't even a gathering point for us. We were only told to meet at the car park, but the coach wasn't even at the car park when we board the coach. We were waiting aimlessly for a Five Stars coach. Hence we called to ask for the plate number, we were given a car plate which starts with BHJ. Just 5 minutes later, a man came up to us and ask us to board another coach which car plate starts with JJQ. Totally confused, we called up again and they said that the coach BHJ broke down during the journey and that we were supposed to take the car plate JJQ.

We were very much impressed with how inefficient your company is in handling such situations and how little information we were given. We do not understand why were we given such lousy service that we had to be accused of accusing your company of cheating our money, when we didn't have that thought. There were even times we even had to plead with your staff for things which we were supposed to get and for them to call us back. We certainly do not enjoy being treated this way, neither do we feel that it was alright to be treated this way.

If your responsibility ends after booking the coach, ferry and resort room for us, and your standard of service is so poor, I don't think that any of my friends or myself would be interested in engaging Five Stars Travel Agency for our future tours.


Their first 2 replies:

Dear Sir / Madam

Thank you for your email and thanks for your support.

I'm sorry to learn of the unpleasant you have come arcoss in the course of booking until completion of the tour.
I'll forward your valuable feedback to the person-in-charge and will revert back to you asap. In the mean time,
please provide us your booking reference to speed up our investigation.

For your information, please allow us 10-14 days to investigate your valuable feedback.

On behalf the management, I would like to apologise to you for any inconvenience caused due to any reason.

Sir/Madam, I looking forward for your reply. Thank you.


Thanks & Regards



Dear Ms Tan,

I have received your feedback from my HQ.

Please allow me 10-14 days to investigate into your below mentioned case.

I will get back to you soonest possible.

Thanks & Regards
Five Stars Tours PPC Branch

After an investigation was done they finally replied to us on the 13th day:

Dear Ms Tan,
 
I want to firstly thank you for your patience with regards to your booking and this matter had been brought up to the management.
 
First and foremost, we are absolutely regretful for the incident that had happened throughout your course of booking due to a lapse of service by our staffs, Ms Jenny Tan & Mr Danny Lim who has inflicted a misconception on the credibility and service standard of Five Stars Tours. Secondly, we would like to extend our most sincere apology to you and your travelling partners for the any frustration and inconvenience caused.
 
While we are dedicated to provide our customers the best service and commitment, every possible effort is enforced for a seamless and pleasant experience throughout the tour. Without prejudice, we had investigated the case and hope to seek your wise understanding while we present you our explanation:
 
It is definitely our responsibility to assist the customer throughout their booking from the start of the booking till the end of the trip. The staff who was in charge of your booking, Ms Jenny Tan, had provided inaccurate information misleading you & your friends throughout the whole incident. She has failed to allow the passengers to make their own choices and discuss of proper alternatives. Also, the mistake of the charges was due to Ms Jenny Tan who made the wrong insertion of the radial button as the default was set to Twin Sharing instead of Quad Sharing thus, creating the mistake on the invoice. Also it is her duty to provide the information & schedule for both the coach & ferry timing upon the time of booking, which I believe was not carried out as you have mentioned that you have no idea of the waiting time between Coach & Ferry Transfers. We agree on your side that Ms Jenny Tan had failed to fulfill her duties to extend her duties in assisting you in the time of needs and had misinterpreted our level of service to you. The management has since dismissed her as a staff in Five Stars Tours(WTH!!! we were told that she has resigned when we were looking for her regarding our booking weeks before we left for redang, which means we have not even informed five star about our displeasure. How would they even know our dissatisfaction?). This also served as a reminder to all our staffs to provide the best quality of service at all time.
 
After the dismissal of Ms Jenny Tan, her bookings were handled over to Mr Danny Lim as he was her buddy. I have questioned Mr Danny on his communication with you & your friends. He sincerely offers his apologies if there was any misunderstandings arised from what he said on the phone. With regards to his refusal to fax over the invoice to you, this was due to the reason that there was a Change in the Hotel that you had booked for, I believe previously was for Laguna Redang which could not be confirmed and changed to Redang Beach Resort. It is the company practice that if there is any amendments to the previous agreed on Travel Plans, we must get the customer to come down and go through with them the amended information and get a signature from the customer (HELLO!!! nice excuse ah.. We wanted a faxed invoice which clearly states it's quad and not twin sharing. The invoice we had says twin sharing which isn't what we want. The change in the hotel took place before Mr Danny came into the picture, and even before Jenny resigned. It has already been confirmed that Jenny helped us book a room at Redand Beach Resort when she was still attending to us.). Sincere apologies for my staffs unprofessionalism in not giving a proper explanation towards our company policy.
 
With regards to the coach plate number given wrongly (while waiting for the coach back to sg, we called five star ourselves for the coach plate number. I know it's bcuz that the initial coach has broke down but shouldn't you call and inform us abt it since we were the ones we called you to ask for the coach plate number, when initially what you wanted us to do is to wait there for someone to recognise us by the five star sticker we had), I have submitted to the management and coach-in-charge to improve and take note of the points of improvement. They would also like to offer their apologies for the inconvenience caused.
 
We seek you understanding in this manner as we definitely will try our best to let this matter on good ground and not to avoid any responsibilities.
 
Lastly, on behalf of the management, sincere apologies for the above mentioned lapse of service and we truly value your feedback and shall look into ways to enhance our services quality to acquire confidence and loyalty of all our valuable customers. We sincerely hope to have you travelling with us in future (nope we wouldn't want to have a bad experience again. This one which we have gone through is enough for us to not travel with you anymore). 
 
Thanks & Regards
Five Stars Tours PPC Branch


I have taken this as a very bad lesson learnt. Others who have travelled with five star also told me about their bad service.

Yeah the whole group is going to US together woohoo!!! will be travelling around with ginnie for abt 1 day or 2 in portland.. Ya only in Portland cuz we cant go further due to the insufficient time.. Cousin's wedding is on June 14 and I can only decide if I can be in time for the wedding after we have booked the flight tics after exams.. Yeah man so excited cuz it will be my first time in US..

Just ended my first paper on NM3215 and 2 more to go.. After 5 May it's freedom and almost everyday will be filled with activities woohoo!!!

Currently not in the mood to study.. Doing something very 'constructive' so revision for the next paper will start later..  

Busy as usual and somethings just make it worse.. they didn't do a proper job which made us spend so much time on it.. I will still insist on what I want and tmr's the deadline.. finally.. do a good job if you want to do it.. not do something which people have to spend even more time to correct it.. *pissed*

NM3215 lecture presentation on Monday was ok but not as good as I thought.. Was too nervous even I tried to calm myself down.. forgot some points and stopped 2sec to recall, luckily, I got back the momentum.. MFM dinner again *woots*..

US trip seems to be so near yet so far.. gotten into top 10 but stingy nm depart only willing to sponsor 1 person per group cuz there were 2 groups who got in.. looking for sponsors is hard.. lecturer currently asking for sponsors from Dean's office and OSA.. hope to hear good news but not carrying high hopes.. I hope the whole group can go together we worked hard for it..

School has become my second home.. Have been staying in school till late cuz of projs.. I'm so tired that the moment I get home, I just want to bathe and lie on my bed to sleep.. that game has become something to energise me and wake me up when I'm dozing off..

She's thankful to her friends.. With them, hard things seem easier to solve, and her mood lightens up with them accompanying her..

She's tired and will having an early night..

From last week onwards it will be crazily busy.. storybook is not as easy as it may sound.. plus those irritating project deadlines and there's still a lecture presentation.. argh each sem is getting busier and time passes as fast which is quite scary.. I can't meet friends whom I want to and all these can only be done after exams.. just done with the drawings and shall go to the media lab to scan in so that I can do the ppt in sch and not spend my whole tue night on 2208..

Certain things do not need to have too much attention to be placed on.. I shall do what I deem I should and ignore those unneccessary as the time will come I hope..

Saturday 07.03.09

The gathering was so fun!!! Was raining so heavily that san yi was praying for the rain to stop and it did! And It seems that it's raining on every bbq session.. The cousins and I did not bbq the food for long this time because xiao jiu took over the job thanks so much.. but we still smelled even it was only awhile in front of the pit.. ate so many nice food and I'm happy.. and we had a pre 1-yr old birthday celebration for the niece.. the mango cake is one of the best sellers and mum suggested buying it, and it was indeed one of the best mango cake I've eaten! Let's look forward to the next gathering:)-

Sunday 08.03.09

Went to ps after dance and had mfm for dinner.. walked around in ps and there are quite a few new shops.. ok maybe I haven't been there for quite long so didn't notice the changes.. dinner was very filling and after I got home, I still had fruits and dessert to eat but lucky part of the dinner was digested on the way home..

Monday 09.03.09

Omgomg we are going to present in lecture for advertising strategy and the operation manager is most likely going to attend the presentation.. presenting in lecture meaning more people will be shooting qns at us.. ahh pls don't..

Went to mfm for lunch for project purposes.. It was raining but thank god joy had a car and she drove us all there.. Had 2 consecutive days of mfm but it's worth it man.. I think that mfm's food is much nicer than fish and co.. Hope that our advertising strategies for mfm would be good enough for them to consider when they open the 5th branch in a month's time, cuz that's when they would consider advertising, as mentioned by the operation manager of mfm..

 

Got back the reflection exercise for nm2201.. Scored quite well and I'm quite satisfied.. but for nm2216 reflection, grades have been stagment though I've been aiming to score better..

Internet is finally back to normal.. The technician said the telephone line was disrupted which caused the internet to be down..

Went to meet my friend after school today.. Went to check out the thing we were supposed to buy -> retail therapy and bought a number of clothes from one of our fav shop and got the member card -> bought the thing -> continued with shopping till about 630 and I bought a pouch as my current one is already peeling for very long and mum is nagging at me to get a new one  -> da pao long john silver for dinner, which I didn't eat for ages -> movie theatre..

Marley and me is a very good movie!!! And I realised we are the same afterall haha.. we must watch that movie together and do all the things which we said to do after exams k!

Shall sleep slightly earlier tonight if not I'll oversleep again..