sceptrevacations.com

Terrible Experience with travel arrangements in Ireland

We used Sceptre in the summer of 2018 for a trip to Ireland and it was a near total disaster--do NOT use them.We developed our own itinerary and asked Sceptre simply to book cars and hotels. Although they provided us with vouchers that claimed to represent reservations, those vouchers repeatedly represented nothing--the vendors had nothing for us. For our first vehicle rental in Dublin, the local car rental company representative pressured us into buying expensive insurance, claiming that the insurance offered through our credit card wouldn't apply because the reservation wasn't charged on our card but rather through Sceptre. Sceptre in New York did not answer the phone (a common occurrence), so we paid. We learned afterward that the local agent was wrong; Sceptre should have informed us of the insurance situation in advance and answered the phone when we called. The next day, we attempted to check in to our prepaid hotel in Kinsale, but notwithstanding that we had a prepaid voucher in hand, the hotel had no record of our reservation. It was a weekend and a bank holiday, so they had no available rooms. Again, no one at Sceptre was available to answer the phone, and so we relied on the hotel to graciously find us other lodging. They did, although the room was far inferior to what we wanted and had booked and paid for.When we finally were able to contact Sceptre, we asked them to reconfirm all our remaining reservations. They claimed to have done so and told us that all was fine--except for a problem with our hotel reservation in Galway. The hotel at which we were supposed to have a reservation was now booked. Sceptre did book us another place--which was lovely, but 15 minutes outside of the city rather than in town as we desired. The biggest problem came a few days later when we arrived at the Cork Airport to pick up another rental vehicle--because of the size of our group, we needed a minivan with an automatic transmission. Again, notwithstanding having a voucher, the car company had no reservation for us. This time, someone did answer the phone at Sceptre, but the agent was completely befuddled and unable to do anything other than tell us to find another rental car on our own. We had to spend vacation hours going to every car rental counter at the Cork airport. There were no minivans available at the Cork airport, from any vendor. There was one car in the entire airport that was marginally workable for our needs, so we grabbed it, notwithstanding that it was smaller than we desired; we were cramped and uncomfortable for the entire second half of our trip.When we returned home we documented in detail to Sceptre our claim for refunds. They repeatedly delayed in substantive response for months, and only after we threatened to sue did they finally reimburse us. Bottom line, Sceptre was incompetent, unprofessional and unresponsive.

Date of experience: Jan 22, 2019