Blogger gets refund after topping Google search

A blogger who used the web to complain about a bad holiday experience has won his battle for compensation.

Andrew Sharman wrote a 'rant blog' about Thomson Holidays after it failed to deal with his written complaints following a Tunisia trip earlier this year. 

It proved so popular that over 10,000 people read it and when surfers typed in the search terms 'Thomson Tunisia trip' and 'Thomson Tunisia review' the blog was at the top of the search results, ahead of the holiday company's site.  

The 23-year-old originally wrote a 10-page letter to the firm complaining about his experiences at the Marhaba Palace Hotel in Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia but six weeks later had only received acknowledgement that his complaint had been received, he said.

Sharman, a developer for a web design and online marketing agency, then decided to publish his blog and used Twitter to publicise it.

It wasn't until after he had told Thomson about his blog's success that it offered him a £595 refund on his £900 holiday.

"I got nowhere with my complaints for a month and a half but when I started beating them on Google, they wanted to talk," Sharman said.

He also said that Thomson asked him to put on his blog that he was happy with the way that the complaint had finally been dealt with.

"I replied in a nice but firm way that I would put something up to say my complaint had been resolved, but also what I had to do to make that happen." 

A Thomson spokeswoman said it was regrettable that Mr Sharman's complaint had not been dealt with in the standard 28 days adding: "Thomson is sorry to hear of the problems encountered by Mr Sharman during his holiday to Tunisia and the subsequent service he received upon his return to the UK.

"All our customers can expect to receive an excellent level of service before, during and after their holiday, regardless of whether or not they publish a blog. This is unacceptable and again we’d like to apologise to Mr Sharman."