Stirling Castle Itineraries

We purchased travel insurance because we knew there was a good chance plans would change and get pushed back due to COVID. We booked the trip, purchased travel insurance and were assured that we could get a FULL REFUND with the included insurance. Well they refuse to give us our money back at this time and take 1600 dollars of our 8,000 (for 2 people) we payed for the trip. I see this is happening a lot and think they may have a lawsuit on their hands given they told so many people that travel insurance would refund the full amount of their trip. We have done one other trip with them but we will never be booking with them again and we will be making sure to let everyone we know to avoid this company all together.

I've been on two trips with Great Value and loved the experience, however, our last trip has been a NIGHTMARE. From no communication from Great Value, to finding out unknown issues with multiple phone calls with different answers, to having to cancel our trip altogether and only getting half our money back. It has been incredibly frustrating. If we weren't as proactive about calling them 7 different times, we would have ended up in our destination with no rental car or way to get ourselves home, and now we are out almost 2K!

Further explanation:
We booked an Ireland/Scotland trip. We would fly into Edinburgh-spend 3 days then fly over to Dublin-spend 3 days, then fly home out of Dublin.

In the past we have extended our trip to stay a few more days, which is what we did on this planned trip. However, this time we found our own airfare as it was dramatically cheaper than having them book it for us. We were told this was fine and that everything else would be in place and ready for us.

We called back to tell them the new dates and that we would be arriving 3 days earlier, so we would want our rental car earlier and we would pay for the extra days. They told us that was no problem and that we would get a confirmation soon. 10 days went past and we never saw anything from them. We called the rental car agency and they hadn’t heard of us. So, we called Great Value back.

This is where things get really fun…. We were then informed we couldn’t extend our trip and that all our airfare will be canceled. According to them, if we miss the first flight all other flights associated would be canceled by the airline. Which when we asked them to work with the airlines to make sure things wouldn’t get canceled, they said they don’t do that. A travel booking agency doesn’t do that…Seriously?!

So, we have no way to get to Ireland once we get to Scotland. Cool, so we can’t even use the other half of our pre-paid trip. Trying to salvage the trip, we asked if we could use our hotel vouchers in Scotland and just say in Scotland the whole time. We were then told, “no, Ireland vouchers are for Ireland only.” Cool, so we paid 1K each for 3 accommodation vouchers, no flights, and a rental car that they NEVER booked.

Finally, at our wit's end, we asked to cancel. We were then informed that we would only get half our money back and even then, we only get credit back with them... In the end, I’ll never use Great Value again. They are so disorganized, unhelpful, and their customer service is far from friendly when you have a real problem. Seriously, find a different company.