Shearings Coach Holidays Reviews

: 55
65% Would buy here again

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Jenny Cottle
Dublin and the Heart of Ireland Oct 22 I was left alone and vulnerable at 4.30am at the pick-up point as the coach was running late. The 'Executive' coach had very limited leg room and narrow sea...Read on
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darren mark vena
Both journeys to and from destination were padded out with unexceptable stops, (hours of boredom). The hotel was not fit to accept customers, ... rooms, unkept and run down. On return made a compla...Read on
J
John Webb
I have an email from Shearings Ledger Group after making a complaint about a hired in 2013 older coach with frayed seat belts and foot rests broken as well as torn seat nets that allowed heavy item...Read on
C
Charlotte
Just got back from one of the worst holidays I have ever experienced. Isle of Wight Friday to Monday… although 2 days of this was spent traveling for absolutely no reason! I say traveling but I mea...Read on
J
J. Barrott
CEO Liam Race you should be very ashamed of your "pile em in and cut all corners" attitude. Our coach break has been a disaster from start to finish, l have never had such a longing to ge...Read on

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    Coach Holiday

    Dublin and the Heart of Ireland Oct 22
    I was left alone and vulnerable at 4.30am at the pick-up point as the coach was running late.
    The 'Executive' coach had very limited leg room and narrow seats. it was not suitable for a long distance drive. The toilets were not cleaned for the duration of the trip and smelled very bad. The heating was either very hot or very cold.
    The drivers had no local knowledge which made the trips out very dull. They seemed disinterested in the paying customers. The trip to Dublin was arbitrarily re-arranged to accommodate the birthday celebration of one driver the night before. As a result the passengers were forced to endure Dublin in a thunderstorm (the only day of the week this occurred, a fact born out by the weather forecast) This enabled them to sleep all afternoon on the coach.
    Once back on the coach soaking wet and miserable, we had to wait a further 40 mins at a garage whilst they re-fueled and tried to pay the garage using a Shearings bank card with no funds in it. Since the drivers had 4 hours free time that afternoon I would question why this was done when the 45 seat coach was was full. As a result we were late back for dinner.
    The travel times to and from our destinations were heavily increased by a multitude of pick- up points.
    The cramped coach was not suitable for anyone who was heavily built or tall. It resembled a school bus. On the journey home the driver spoke for 7-10 mins on his mobile phone, informing his caller the he was "concentrating" on his driving on numerous occasions, but continuing the conversation.
    Shearings response to my complaints;
    They deal with everything in-house, all drivers are contracted out and the coaches are individually leased. When they called me I spent the best part of an hour confirming my experiences, after which time the customer service rep had a five minute exchange with her manager and I was dismissed. No wonder Shearings went into liquidation! Has Ian Henry of Leger any idea what he has taken on?


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    coach tour to the isle of wight

    Both journeys to and from destination were padded out with unexceptable stops, (hours of boredom). The hotel was not fit to accept customers, ... rooms, unkept and run down. On return made a complaint to Shearings but received no help or recognition whatsoever. The "customer relations" department is wrongly titled, they do not care a jot. They have your money and wash their hands of you.
    My advice would be find another operator that actually cares and has some standards.
    Such a shame as we travelled with Shearings a few years ago and had a great holiday.
    Please be warned


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    4 day Yorkshire tour by older coach hired in

    I have an email from Shearings Ledger Group after making a complaint about a hired in 2013 older coach with frayed seat belts and foot rests broken as well as torn seat nets that allowed heavy items to fall through?
    Stating they had inspected this coach and passed it as being safe with no defects so all on this coach was forced to use it for 4 days. This email continues they only bought the brand name and not the assets so they do not have any coaches so use third party hire coaches instead. So if you are lucky you will be taken in a Shearings coach on your chosen tour or if you are unlucky like on our 4 day tour you could be forced into an older coach and have your safety put at risk when you can't wear a frayed seat belt and are told this coach has no defects so they have now closed this complaint I made? So beware you have been warned as nothing is clear on their website unless you really dig to be told they may use hired in coaches? Ours came from the South East and the driver had never been to Yorkshire so any information about places visited were not given at all. We shall never use this coach company again having experienced many happy tours with Shearings before it was bought by Legger Coaches in the pandemic and this disregard for customers and misleading advertising seems to be the normal way of trading now.

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    Holiday

    Just got back from one of the worst holidays I have ever experienced. Isle of Wight Friday to Monday… although 2 days of this was spent traveling for absolutely no reason! I say traveling but I mean having to get off the coach every half an hour because the coach driver had no clue!
    We got picked up Friday morning and dropped off at Cobham to catch our main coach and what a coach it was!! It must of been Shearings oldest coach, very uncomfortable and it had so many scratches and dents I don’t know how you allowed it to be used!
    Had to waste time in Cobham on the outbound journey and then we had to waste time at the Ferry terminal in Portsmouth. We eventually got on to the Ferry and then finally made our way to the hotel… and oh boy what a hotel!!
    We received our key and was told that the lift doesn’t work and they can’t get an engineer out yet as it’s the weekend and it’s the Isle of Wight (so apparently no engineers work on the Isle of Wight). Walked up the stairs to the room (The ceiling in the corridor had mould patches which I have photos of) to our room and unlocked the door to what can only be described as an absolute ... hole. There is no way on earth that room had been cleaned in what must of been months. Thick dust everywhere, thick cobwebs with spiders hanging off them, crumbs over the carpet, mould on the window, stains on the bathroom wall which were brown streaks so I will leave that to your imagination as to what it was.
    Now it’s time for dinner, if you can call it dinner. A choice of three things for starters, main and dessert, starters mainly being soup every night. My soup eventually arrived and at first I thought it was actually nice, until I had a slither of the tin in the soup which had obviously come off when the chef opened a tin. All of the starters and mains were either cold or lukewarm, service was extremely slow as there was only 2/3 servers working as the hotel was so short staffed (despite knowing a coach full of people were arriving)
    The next night we sat in one of the lounges before dinner and noticed that on the lower part of the wall had water marks where there had been a leak, so we looked up at the ceiling and there was thick black mould pores on the ceiling (again I took photos of this as we couldn’t believe this actually passed health and safety)
    The night before we were due to travel home we were informed that the hotel would not be providing us with a cooked breakfast that morning (despite it being included in the cost) and instead they would lay on cereals and if we would like a hot breakfast sandwich to take with us on the coach we would have to let them know… which I did and received a very cold sausage sandwich.
    The journey home was an absolute shambles, we had to get up at 5:45 to get down for cereals as the coach was leaving at 7:15. We reached the ferry and the coach driver informed us that we were being put on an earlier ferry home (absolutely no need for it) and because of that he would stop at a service station somewhere along the motorway. So we were driving along and the driver pulls in to one service station which only had a Starbucks and a petrol station and tells us he will drive further along to find one with better amenities. He finally pulls in to another service station which only had yet again another Starbucks and a petrol station!! But insists we have to waste 45 minutes here as we were ahead of schedule! How ridiculous! It wasn’t even a proper service station! So we all eventually get back on the coach and the driver tells us we are about 30 minutes away from Cobham (Where we have to pick up our transfer coach) but 7 minutes later we are at Cobham! The driver clearly doesn’t have a clue on the roads! So because it only took 7 minutes to get from petrol station Starbucks to Cobham instead of the 30 minutes the driver stated we had to waste 2 and a half hours at Cobham service station before we could get our coach transfer.
    This whole holiday for the 3 of us cost £919… £919 spent traveling for two days and inhaling mould and dust for the other two.
    A journey that should of taken 3 and a half hours tops instead took 7 and a half hours,
    Unhappy is an understatement.


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    Torquay coach "holiday". 27/09/2021.

    CEO Liam Race you should be very ashamed of your "pile em in and cut all corners" attitude. Our coach break has been a disaster from start to finish, l have never had such a longing to get back home as l have these last few awful days with Shearings/Leger. From waiting in Donnington amid the chaos of finding our coaches, to arriving at the Trecarn Hotel. Torquay, where chaos again descended as 3 coach loads of people were being attended to by just one person giving the room keys out. Then there was the coach driver who's attitude from start to finish of the "holiday" was one of distain, sarcasm and fillng the coach up with cigarette smoke. A good portion of the people on board his coach were disabled and he didn't offer a helping hand to any of them as they struggled up the coach steps. Peter is his name. Now l come to the meal times!. Queueing was par for the course, and if you didn't arrive when the "food" was put out then when the queueing dwindled one would have cold slop and tepid frozen veg. I wouldn't feed a dog on the diet that was laughingly called food!. Home day at the hotel was a long queue of 3 coaches of people, all departing at the same time of 8.00am, with breakfast starting at 7.00am. Lots of pushing and shoving as everyone wanted to eat before the journey to Donnington and another 2,3,4 hour wait for a feeder coach back to Sheffield and other destinations.
    Mr Race either you or one of your cohorts will read these reviews, if only to check on your cash cow of Shearings/ Leger holidays. Well Mr Race l sincerely hope that your venture falls on its face, you deserve as much respect as we got and that was none at all.

    I have clicked 1 star on each question but only because there were no none stars!!!.


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    tenby imperial hotel 2nd to 6th August

    positive RECENTLY WE WENT ON THIS HOLIDAY IT WASNT PERFECT BUT THE COACH DRIVER RODDY WAS MARVELLOUS.
    ALSO RICKY HOTEL MAMANGER AND ALL THE STAFF GREAT.
    A CHEF WALKED OUT AND LEFT THEM IN THE LURCH THEY GOT US FISH AND CHIPS AND ICECREAM AND SOME FREE WINE.

    A PERCENTAGE OF THE OTHER CLIENTS WERE AWFUL AND YOU WILL NO DOUBT HERE A LOAD OF CRITISM. WE ALL KNOW HOE THE PANDEMIC HAS CAUSED STAFF SHORTAGES.
    WE WERE JUST SO HAPPY TO GET AWAY. THEY WERE LIKE
    EGGING EACH OTHER ON I PRESUMED THEY WANTED A FREE
    HOLIDAY I JUST WANTED TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT


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    Llandudno trip

    We went to Llandudno a few years ago which took forever to get there having left home at 7 am and not getting to the hotel till 6pm. We thought it couldn't happen again., it is doing! We are on our way to Llandudno again having left home at 5.50am and after going all around the houses we are still only in Manchester at the time of 11am. We've been stuck on this coach for over half an hour while the driver is doing god knows what. Never in my life will I travel with this company again, frustration doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling now.


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    Coach tour

    Absolutely diabolical , got picked up from Gretna ( 20 miles from home ) at 5.45 am , taxi didn't turn up till 5.55 . Taxi to Penrith then bus to Leeds . Its now 12.30pm and were still waiting on the coach to take us to Harrogate . Now thats been 6 hrs 45 mins a d we've had one stop . Harrogate from Dumfries is 2.5 hrs away . We have been told were being picked up on Monday after breakfast and won't be back in Gretna till 7.30pm . If wed known all this before we went i would NEVER have booked and won't be using shearings again in the future . If i could give it no stars i would .


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    Scenic Staffordshire & Shropshire Travelled on 5 July 2021

    Where do I begin? We were picked up by a dirty taxi at 8am then en route to our coach pick up, 4 more passengers got in. 6 people from 3 different households, in a 6 seater taxi we were facing each other and not 1 metre away from the passengers who were from different households, totally against government Covid regulations. Then on to Rugby services where we had an hour's wait to get our tour coach, the coach was very full, again not adhering to Covid regulations. We arrived at our hotel at 2pm. Our chosen hotel in Stafford was no longer available so we had been moved, by Shearings, to a Mercure business / airport style stopover hotel next to the M6 in Birmingham. We had asked for a quiet room but guess what our window faced the motorway. Our room was very basic, with no wardrobe or drawers so we had to keep our belongings in our suitcases.

    Food
    We were told dinner was at 6pm, if we were late we would miss the starter. The only way I could describe the evening meal was 'school dinners'. Very little choice, no details whether the food was vegetarian or vegan or details for allergies. The cheapest ingredients were used and the pudding was either fruit salad or cake!! To be able to have a choice at breakfast we had to be there at 8am, once the hot food ran out there was no more, the alternative was cereal and cheap white bread for toast, no fruit, yogurt or croissants were available.

    Trips
    We left at 10am, and were taken straight to the town and dropped off. The coach driver was an agency driver who told us he didn't know the area, so we were given no information about the places we were visiting. The second day we (Shearings words) 'took a scenic drive through the peaceful Shropshire countryside, calling at pretty and characterful villages along the way'. In reality we sped along the motorway at 70mph to Market Drayton and Oswestry, neither of which are villages, we travelled so fast that we could not see anything other than the central reservation or hard shoulder of the motorway. Every day we had to be back on the coach at 3pm for our journey back, hardly a day trip. We spent more time in our hotel room than seeing the countryside, the reason for our holiday.

    Journey home
    We did not leave our hotel until after midday, again another wasted morning, for the 45 minute journey to Rugby Services. Then a 90 minute wait for the ongoing coach, arriving back at our pickup point at 6.30pm.

    Summary
    Would we travel with Shearings or Leger again, DEFINITELY NOT. The complete disregard for Covid regulations, the lack of information about the area, the patronising coach driver who wore his mask round his chin, They provided the most basic service they could get away with. The company went into administration last year and with their total lack of any customer service it will happen again before long. We have travelled with many more customer focussed travel companies in the past and will look to them when we travel again.


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    Not impressed with service

    Absolutely gutted to know and been told that shearings no longer pick up from Lincolnshire Grimsby area for weekend breaks and holidays they only do midlands pick ups now and south east pick ups which I find recdicious. I used to go with shearings every year and been on some fab holidays with them. But since they been taken over I can not find or get a holiday with them from my local area. They are going to lose customers acting this way. I spent over 2 hours on the phone talking to a member of staff who said several times no these coach dont pick up from your area. I was told this by several shearing advisors and it's so very very wrong. For me to travel to south east pick up to get the coach would take me over 6 hours and I don't drive. They are going to lose many customers and passengers because of these cut backs on pick ups departures. I think I would take my holiday business else where from no one. It seems like shearings don't really care no more like they used to

    CARLTON HOTEL GREAT YARMOUTH
    This hotel has been closed for over a year & will be closed for a long time due to roof collapse shearings took our booking for this hotel knowing it was closed & will not open .We were then TOLD (with no choice given,) that we could not have a refund because they offered similar accommodation in the Comfort hotel which did have brilliant staff , but had no seaview, no entertainment, very dated rooms NO LIFT and we were placed on the 1st floor with a 85 yr old who had recently been fitted with a pacemaker. Shearings were told if no lift we had to have ground floor rooms. Coupled with a driver who DID NOT take any temperature readings for 2 days,he did say sorry he forgot ,12hrs on in a confined area with no checks he should be sacked . Will NOT use shearings again even if it was free.

    Hi don't bother my friend
    We have travelled with shearings for many year having two to three breaks a year. Just got back from Torquay. We live in Ellesmere port and it took ten hours outbound and eleven inbound.
    Been with old shearings many times to this part of the country and no more than six hour each way!
    This company is ledger! The purchase the name and data base. And are now using the shearing brand. Believe me its not shearings as it was. My trip has to many disappointments to mention here the only plus side was the coach drive named Jack a young man who was a real nice guy.
    We will never travel with this company again.


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