We booked a Free and Easy Package to Taipei this September. I thought that nothing could go wrong with a Free and Easy tour. How wrong could I be with Nam Ho, or more specifically, its staff Cadbrine!

When we first booked with this woman, Cadbrine, at NATAS 2009, she didn't even bother to mention to us that users of certain credit cards will get to keep nicer luggage. How difficult is it to just say,"If you use (DBS or HSBC) bank's credit card, you can collect a nicer-looking luggage bag over there." No. It's too heavy a line to spill out from her precious gold lips. So we collected a cheapo looking travel bag for the credit card we used.

Nevermind, it's just a luggage bag.

When I went down to make the balance payment, I realised that Cadbrine didn't even inform me that each person has to top up $5 for the change in hotel. It's not a big amount but I thought it only decent for this woman to open her golden lips to just let me know in advance.

When I went home, my husband looked at the receipts and asked me,"Did the staff inform you which Terminal to go to and where to collect the boarding passes?"

So darn me. The next day, we had to call them to ask them for the all-important information they should have briefed us at the counter.

I thought everything that could have gone wrong should end there. No. The worst is yet to come.

When we were checking in at the Changi Airport, we were informed that my sister's passport was five months to expiry, and anything short of six months won't do.

When I questioned the woman, Cadbrine, why she didn't check our passports and what we are going to do with the visa charges as well as the charges the airport was going to levy on us for the change of flight, she gave the most infuriating answer,"Eh ... you can't say this you know? I did give you very obvious hint by asking if your passports were expired."

I didn't know expiry of passports has two meanings until then.

When I questioned her further, she gave a weak argument,"Everybody knows that you need to have six months or more before you can go overseas."

When my sister went down to Nam Ho and asked her why she didn't check the passports, she exclaimed,"Wah! You WIN ALREADY LOR!"

And she insisted that she has already done her job by asking us if our passports had expired. She even challenged us to go complain to CASE (which I'm sure she'd know that it's all bark and no bite organisation).

I've never met a more impossible and unreasonable customer service person in my life.

To be fair, the Nam Ho manager stepped in and offered to pay for the charges.

I'm just miffed that my self-planned itinerary had to suffer major changes and as a result, we missed a few things we'd planned to do, go and see.

Above all, if you ever book with Nam Ho, don't go to this Cadbrine and save yourself all the frustration and exasperation. For someone who can't even handle a Free and Easy, what else can she do?

I will also be writing to the STB for reply and comment from agents responsible for comment and feedback so that the related authority can clamp down on some extremely rude and unreasonable travel agents in S'pore. It will definitely tarnish our nation's image in the long run.

Book a trip to penang and the staff told me that the hotel was near the city centre. Turn out it was damned far adn wulu even the local don't know where it is. So waste a lot of time and money travelling to and fro from hotel. Worse still, when reached the hotel, the staff told us that the Nam Ho agency has not booked the room for us and we have to pay for the stay. Really made me angry! The worst travel agency in Singapore!