Last christmas my son give me 1 night as a gift in this place, and i booked this last weekend. The offer had included a boat trip in Douro river. Eveything went well while booking, i booked the boat trip 2 days before, the person in charge (Ana Maria) confirmed the hour of the boat trip.


Unfortunately, everything was done with a terrible incompetence!
1) I went to pick up the tickets for the boat trip at the hotel, instead of going straight to the docks. The person in charge should have arranjed the necessary with the boat company...
2) I was given a paper with the name of the lady and the hotel, but no boat company name. The boat trip was as 2.15 PM. I had to search and ask and the BIG SURPRISE was when they discovered that there wasn't a single boat company that operated in the afteernoon. The trip's after lunch didn't exists for several months! And the person from a boat company said that he no longer worked woth that lady/hotel!

I was very angry and called the person in charge (Ana Maria) with my protest and she just said that she was probably wrong and they could take the next boat trip in the morning after... of course that wasn't possible for me. Ana Maria then called my son and start saying that i was not correct talking with her and that there was a mistake from her and the only thing she could offer was the returning of all money if i decided to cancel the night. My son said to her that was too little for all the troubles caused and she never apologied correctly, prefering to keep her pride and just not compensating me or my son in any way, even when my son suggested her that..

It was a terrible form or resolving a mistake, that could have been overcome if the person just had apologied sincerely and had compensate me or my son with anything, but instead she just return the money.

People in Portugal just don't get that when something went wrong, you have to compensate the client in anyway. The client can't just leave with less than he got and payed!

I don't even want to talk more to this, as you can imagine..