Are you bovvered?

Travel agents are like a favourite outfit. When you find one that suits you, that you trust and you feel comfortable with you will stick with them.

For the last few years we’ve used an amazing agent who has gone the extra mile for us, helping us out with our booking queries, questions and quandaries. That amazing agent has been on maternity leave (Congratulations!) and we’ve been handed over to one of her colleagues in the interim.

It’s hard to believe the service from two people who work for the same company could be so different.

We have a cruise booked on the beautiful MSC Magnifica, just a cheeky 2 night break for Easter from Hamburg to Southampton, we’ve noticed the price has changed significantly since we booked so I emailed the agent to check how much it would be to upgrade to an Aurea cabin from our Fantastica cabin. “I’ll get back to you” was the response. I’m still waiting after two days!

This isn’t the first time this particular agent hasn’t provided the best service. We have a cruise coming up on MSC Fantasia. We’re both avid MSC cruise fans – within three years of cruising we’ve attained the highest level of loyalty and all our main holidays have been taken aboard MSC.

Can you imagine, therefore, what I felt when the agent started suggesting that my chosen cruise line, on which I have spent so many days and have so many wonderful memories, suggested that the line was below par and that we wouldn’t enjoy the cruise as “it’s not like P&O”.

Frankly I’m glad MSC isn’t like P&O – we like the line for it’s cosmopolitan style, international passenger mix, excellent value, FABULOUS ships and service.

Since those off comments we’ve booked three more MSC cruises, needless to say none of them were through this agent.

Clearly the guy in question isn’t interested, so I’ll leave him to it to look after his ‘Carry on cruising’ on P&O brigade.