The letterbox is named after an experience of Pontins, click here to read our review.

The box is hidden on the border of Dartmoor. We have selected a location which is ‘off the beaten track’ in order to preserve our box for a long time, hopefully it will not be found by vandals. We hope you enjoy finding it, and please sign the book! Also please let us know here that you have found the box, and report any concerns here. We do not go to Dartmoor often, we live 200 miles away and really look forward to reading your comments.

Add comments below, we love to hear when the box has been located!

On the other hand there are comments from visitors who have been to Pontins for years, enjoy the experience and would go back - the general feeling being that Pontins might be tired, but it is good value for money …. “You get what you pay for” which is of course, a true statement…..but for me the ultimate factor is “whatever the age of something, it has to be clean, no compromise.”

One person posted the following in their comment, which I think just about sums it up….
“As for the people saying “but you only paid £48 or what ever” that’s bullsh*t £48 or not you still expect a standard if I buy a two tins of baked beans from the supermarket for 50p and one for 2p when I open the 2p tin I don’t expect to find dirty mouldy old beans and don’t expect to find this on my holiday it doesn’t matter how cheap it was.”
Click to read entire comment

I challenge someone senior from Pontins to come here and define ‘clean’.

OUR PONTINS HORROR STORY STARTS HERE….

Lets start off with Justina and my visit to Brixham, add your own experiences below….. lots of people are commenting their own thoughts from Pontins around the country….

Justina and I have a Dartmoor letterbox called ‘Say No to Pontins’. We named it after the place we booked to stay at, and left within thirty minutes of arriving. A “Dartmoor Letterbox” is a hidden stamp somewhere in Dartmoor, there are thousands of them on the moor, a great activity for families. Letterboxes traditionally have names, we named and placed ours during the same week we were meant to be at Pontins, but instead we opted out and stayed in our own tent, which cost more than Pontins.
We booked a ‘Sun Holiday’ through the ‘collect vouchers’ campaign in the Sun Newspaper in order to get a budget holiday in Devon. All in, it cost us about £48 for a week at Pontins.

We were sent all the details by Pontin’s Wall Park, Devon and paid the extra £10 linen charge over the phone.

On the website, the park claims to be “the perfect ‘chill out’ zone”…. excellent, should be fun then!

When we arrived at the park we were welcomed by the man on the gate, then welcomed again at Reception and given a set of keys to a chalet. The chalets looked quite old with modern frontage but as we walked through the park to get to the one we had been allocated…the visual look of each chalet appartment started to get worse and worse and became wooden doors and metal windows with peeling paint. A man with a hammer was bashing a window frame to fix it, it did not look good.

When we finally managed to open the stiff old door of the chalet the first thing that hit us was a terrible smell. Inside the chalet the carpet looked well worn and dirty, there was skank and dirt all over the cooker and its buttons and the plastic ’school chairs’ were battered, bashed and covered in sticky mess. Opening the window was a challenge, we got it open to find we could not close it again.

Justina and I then agreed that we would not be staying in this horrible excuse for holiday accomodation, unclean, well worn and not secure.

We were cautious of going back to reception to complain, neither of us had ever complained about holiday accomodation before and wondered if we should simply just drive out of the park and pitch our tent in a nearby campsite.

We walked over to the reception, and spoke with the person on the door who’s job it is to welcome guests, she suggested it was best to talk to the person on Reception. At reception another couple were complaining, a further lady was so cross with the state of the chalet she had been allocated that she was demanding her money back and wanted to go home.

Eventually the girl on reception provided us with another key, for a ‘Classic’ format chalet. She went out to the back office to speak to her manager (I love the way management hide when customers have complaints). When she brought the key out she whispered to us that she would not have wished her worst enemy to stay in the original chalet we had been offered and that the standard of the chalet we were being offered now, she personally would stay in as it is much nicer.

We took the key and went to look at the chalet, which was located close to the reception. Although the door and windows on this chalet were double glazed, we found the internal condition of the chalet to be the same as the first chalet we had viewed. This chalet had a infestation of spiders around the bathroom roof and lots of dead flies on the toilet seat.

We promptly took the keys back and said that we were not happy with the condition of the chalet. Another set of keys were given to us. We then wandered off in another direction to check out our third chalet.

When we opened the door, it did not smell. The room looked clean, and tidy. We then walked into the bedroom and the first thing we saw was blood stains on the bedsheets.

We walked back to reception, with the key, and asked to see the manager as we required a full refund.

We were then invited to take a seat while the manager was informed that we were waiting to see her. Still sitting in the reception were the other people that had been complaining about the accomodation they had been offered, we were joined by another couple who also had a complaint. An elderly lady also came in to complain about her chalet having a terrible smell, she was told to open the windows… the smell would go away in time. I love the way that the staff on the desk say “Oh, cleaners again” to each other…. blaming the cleaners for the poor condition of the chalets.

Eventually the manager came to see us. We were invited into her office. We were made to wait 10 minutes before we could see her, this tactic is typical of management training….leave those with the complaint to calm down a bit before you face them.

While seated in the managers office, which I have to say, looked like something out of the 80’s (don’t they ever have refits?) the manager spoke with eye contact with Justina. Because Justina was the contact on all documentation, all questions and queries were directed at her. Justina complained about the chalets. We were told that:

1) The toilet seat covered in mites/moss/dirt/flies (whatever it was) is due to a ventilation shaft directly about the toilet. Sorry Pontins, but that is not an excuse, you should cover the shafts to stop things falling through.

2) An independent cleaning company clean the chalets, not Pontins. Sorry Pontins, you should inspect their work.

3) A company (the manager even named it!) are responsible for the linen on the beds, including washing it. Again, Pontins, that is still your problem. Blood stained sheets is unacceptable and you should have identified that when you inspect the chalets.

4) The manager told us that we were the first of 700 families to have checked in to have made a complaint over the weekend, and ask for a refund. I find this very hard to believe, firstly there are not 700 chalets and secondly….if the manager had gone into reception (instead of hiding out the back) she would see the complainers first hand.

We were given a full cash refund by the manager and promptly drove to a camp site and had a great few days in the tent.

I believe that Pontins offer their oldest chalets to new arrivals. Some arrivals will not complain, as they have different standards to what is acceptable. Those who complain then get ‘upgraded’ to a less tired chalet. This therefore means the ‘less tired chalets’ stay ‘newer in condition’ for longer, as they are used less. This is my theory.

We were told by the manager that they have 6 chalets which are ‘luxury’ and are all occupied. My belief is that we would have been offered one of these chalets if one had been available, I bet they are full of people who complained like we did, but quicker.

Our so called ‘free upgrade’ to a ‘classic chalet’ would have costed us another £40. Justina pointed out that the upgrade fee would simply give us a double glazed door and window for the extra money. That is simply silly.As we drove out the gate the man on the gate said “going so soon?”…to which we replied “yep, and not coming back”. “Why is that?” he said. “Condition of chalets” we replied…. Needless to say, from what he said next, we were not the first to have left because of the standard of accomodation.

We will never, ever, ever go in or near another Pontin’s ever again. We do hope that someone replies to this with a positive Pontin’s experience.

Add comments below, sadly they will might not show straight away as some get highlighted for moderation in order to remove spam.

And finally….. and shockingly…. on the front page of the frequently asked questions section of the Pontins website one of the most ‘popular questions‘ is this one….

Click here to have a read of the comments people have made on this article, and add your own comment too if you want!

A poll was conducted on this page to find out what the first 1000(ish) voters thought of Pontins, the poll has now closed (October 2008) and here are the results (click to enlarge):