DAMN those wide sandy beaches and oceans full of fish.
And let's not get started on the consistency of gravy.

Honestly, it's enough to ruin a perfectly pleasant holiday, according to a list of
recent complaints by not-so-intrepid British tourists.

Just found this article - It's amazing what some people will complain about...

The thing I find amusing is the journalistic spin in the Australian report.  "Whingeing Poms" it says, while Aussies are cool dudes.  Australians travel a lot and are used to adversity, take it in their stride etc etc etc.  Yeah right!

While it is true that the complaints themselves are a cause for amusement and the people who made them are not, by any stretch of the imagination, candidates for Mensa,  the article could have been written by our old friend Tasha...   

LOL!

Come to think of it.... Aussie beaches *are* very sandy...

*thinks back to the crappy Singapore beaches*

http://notalwaysright.com/

A grand repository of idiotic customers' quotes, whether they're harassing retail staff, complaining to customer service or blowing the minds of tech support with their stupidity... funny junk.

> We had to queue outside with no air-conditioning.

I don't see what is so stupid about this complaint.  The with no AC portion is an explanatory clause saying why it is unacceptable to queue outside.

SK's link has some awesome accounts! hahahahaha

drdec - sure... hard to judge just by that one liner.

And the article *is* very slanted. I've heard so many similar complaints from Aussie tourists. Doubt it's got anything to do with nationality

I think I remember complaining that there was too much 'light' in a hotel. I was also rather hungover and couldnt see the justification of so much lighting between my room and the breakfast bar..

HAHAHAHA

While Australians love a rant as much as the next ticked-off customer, they are more likely to see the funny side of a bad situation than British tourists, Flight Centre spokesman Haydn Long said.

Ha. I went to school with Haydn.

The with no AC portion is an explanatory clause saying why it is unacceptable to queue outside.

What if you are in a queue waiting to go inside....? 

Waiting in a queue in a popular European tourist destination can be really irritating for Brits.  We tend to form an orderly queue based on who got their first and make allowances for obvious disability.  However our mainland European neighbours have not yet evolved to the point where they can grasp the concept of fair play in such situations and tend to form up as a jostling mob.

For memory ... Longy played a bit of Rugger ... at fullback for Bath for a couple of years after school. Saw him recently. Still a bit of a tosser.

tend to form up as a jostling mob.

Can't say for the Euros but have had an experience in a Cairo phone booth ringing home at Christmas time. The fact that it coincided with the last day of Ramadan meant every Egyptian and his dog cat was out and about and roughly half of them wanted to use the same phone that I had. About a half again were so close I suggested one of the take the receiver and wish mum and dad a Merry Christmas. Needless to say how that was met. We were home on the 28th.

hahahaha

>>The with no AC portion is an explanatory clause saying why it is unacceptable to queue outside.

>What if you are in a queue waiting to go inside....?

What if you are?  Many indoor places provide indoor queues.  For example, most movie theaters locally provide an indoor queue.  Lines at Walt Disney World are a combination of indoor and outdoor queues depending on the particular attraction.  In my sees this was actually a highly constructive comment which gives the target a specific action they could take to improve the experience of their customer.  The supposed stupid factor is that the speaker expects AC outside when in actuality the speaker is saying they expect the queue to be indoors and sheltered from the elements.

Fullback eh!  What hair products does he use...

Yes Arthur. He would use those. I'm not familiar with the types and brands but I know enough to know not to pat him on the head. The palm could come away with a sensation ranging from an oil slick to a razorwire slashing.

But then dr dec, you just can't have that every where.

Eg - when we went horse riding at the Blue Mountains. The office was big enough, but so many ppl turned up at one go, that the queue *had* to extend outside. Thing is I wouldn't expect them to build a bigger office, it wasn't a theme park or anything. Just a small ranch.

So, back to the point - I understand what you're saying, but it's too hard to tell what exactly this person was complaining about. If they were unhappy abt having to queue outside, for whatever reason, fair enough.
But adding the no air-con clause in the complaint really does make it sound like they expected to be cooled off when outdoors.

And finally, sometimes you have no choice but to queue up outside, yes, without air conditioning....

As much as I hate the heat here I'm not a big fan of air conditioning. Excuse the pun.

hahahaha

Yeah.... I wish the windows in this office could be opened.

It's so weird to be sitting here freezing, and the get hit by a nice warm breeze when you walk out

@dek, I'm inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt.  It is much more likely that the person who made the statement is talking about a situation where it makes sense to expect an indoor queue or one would not be impractical than to assume they are stupid and expect the outdoors to be air-conditioned.  It is especially important to give people who are outside your normal culture the benefit of the doubt because it is so easy to misunderstand things when the shared history and culture is lacking.

Sure, and I was agreeing with you!

The complaint simply was.." We had to queue outside with no air-conditioning."

Maybe a trip to Antarctica would be more to their liking?

If you can't exist without air conditioning, then perhaps it's not a good idea to come to Australia (or any other tropical or sub tropical country) during the summer months..

Antictica?

Antictica?

Oops...  (fixed)

Thanks Morgan..

The likelyhood is though that the complainants are morons.

I'm a better tourist than I am a local.

What I mean is, on a day to day basis, I'm more likely to pick on a service issue than if I am on a holiday.

I never complain about anything..

Dek, I'm exactly the same. I grumble about everything at home, but when I'm somewhere else, I don't seem to mind so much..

Yeah... I think it's because my mind set is that locally, I'm gonna keep coming back, esp to my regular spots. When on a holiday, it's easier to brush off

A few weeks ago I was on a QR train that broke down. The very next day I was on the train behind the one that broke down. Hard to say which is worse. This morning the 7:15 was broken down. Come on guys ... get your shit together.

I never complain about anything.

Me neither.

ROFL!

That's not a complaint... it's an observation innit?

Of course it is!

Yes. QR have always got me home. Except for once.

Oh?

What happened? You fell asleep and they locked you into the cabin?

Ooh.. I was always scared that would happen to me, but consoled myself that when the train finally stopped, they would inspect the carriages and find me.

Then again, it is CityRail, and I suspect that they just wouldn't bother with that. Or they'd just leave me there as a joke.

Hahaha, I once fell asleep in the back of one of the old Bayside Buses, that used to operate before the Bris City Council took over the run to Wynnum.. I had been celebrating in the city with some guys from work and caught the last bus home at 11.30pm...I ended up at the bus depot and the guy cleaning out the buses found me at about 2.00am and thought I was dead,,, I had won a meat tray at the pub several hours earlier and when I went to sleep on the back seat. all the blood and meat juices leaked out all over the front of my shirt....The poor guy nearly had a fit when he saw me and woke me up by poking me with his broom handle ...hahaha, I'll never forget the look on his face when I sat up..(I had no idea what I must have looked like)...

ROFL!!!

What a story!

The funny part was the next morning when my wife found my shirt all covered in blood and crap before I woke up...(She was not amused for some reason) and the meat tray that I had stuffed in the fridg was pretty smelly also..I won it about 7.00pm and it never got into the fridg till 2.30am..(Summer time in Bris)

Ah, those were the days..

The most important question -

Was the meat okay to eat??

No, that was the worst part of it...my wife threw it out because it was too smelly...(it had been unrefrigerated fot 7½ hours in the summer, so you can imagine)..

It was a $50 meat tray, a huge one. (you got a lot of meat for $50 in the late 60s)...

HAHAHA that's brill, andro   I think we all have a story like that to tell... i think mine hasn't happened yet though

Plenty of time for that to happen, Morgan..

What happened? You fell asleep and they locked you into the cabin?

No. The only one time is today. I will let you know how it goes.

Well I'm about 90% sure anyway... it could have happened when I was completely smashed, and I purely don't remember it.

Hahaha, that's possible Morgan...

In the UK we are into the season where the fuckwits go on holiday again.  Let's give it a few more weeks and see what crappy complaints they come up with this time.  If nothing else you have to admire the capability of a moron to actually come up with such original things...

I've just come into this thread, and I have to support Arthur re the whole "Whingeing Pom" thing - if you really want to see stupid complaints on holiday, try acting as a tour guide to a bunch of Texan Christian Tourists in Melbourne.

Actually the more I think about it the less sense the whole "Whingeing Pom" thing makes.  It doesn't fit in with my experiences with the English at all.  And the similarities in culture between the two countries far outweigh the differences when you look at almost any other cultures worldwide.

Yeh... Aussie whinge way more!

*hides*

Awwww! No we don't... that's not fair!

LOL!

If you go by stereotype, the Brits should all have stiff upper lips and not want to cause a fuss.

On the other hand, we also have a lot of stupid folks, who are no doubt all too happy to whinge about stuff.

The awful thing for us whinging Poms is that the general attitude and stupidity of our former colonials (USA, Indaia, Aus NZ etc..) is in some way down to what they inherited from the Motherland.  On the other hand, any attributes that are positive, such as the odd clever person, is nothing to do with the inheritance from the Motherland...

Heh. First time I've head the colonies inheriting anything but infrastructure!

Do you know we've actually got a show on tv called "Brits Behaving Badly?"

Are you serious??

Haven't you seen it?

No!

Had no idea it existed.

I guess by this stage I should be surprised at being surprised at the so-called reality shows they keep making with ridiculous premises.... but they still get me.

I think that this is what Morgan is talking about.  Sounds like one of those many programs that are made by idiots, for idiots to believe, while the rest of us find it to be slightly entertaining drivel.

Nuh uh.... I don't see ANY entertainment value there

Entertainment is something which will at least amuse me.

These only enrage and frustrate me

I heard Phil Tufnell was made famous for his role in "Celebrity Get Outta Dodge" or whatever it was called.

Obviously not famous enough.... who be he?

I think he took 6/ in Adelaide once.

I wonder if he's related to, or actually is, John Robie...?

  do we have a celebrity tanglerer-er-er???!!!

Well, you don't get bigger celebrities than Mr Dent...

We don't?

Lead role in a radio series, 5 books, a TV series, a film, multiple stage productions, video games and comic books. Arthur Dent is a pretty big star...

Seriously!? I never even knew!! Wow Arthur.... congratulations!

Ohhhhh...........

*smacks head against wall again*

I geddit...

Har. Har.

Hehe... sorry, that was too good to resist.

At least you figured it out pretty quickly, otherwise I'd have had to really start to mess with you... 

Brains not thinking at the moment... although maybe boosted Arthur's ego -  fan of five seconds!

Sorry Morgan.  I am far too old and ugly to have an ego of any sort.

Oh Bah!!

LOL You're worse than me SK....

I resisted!!