Be aware of stunt agents for Hajj

by Ady Grewal Content writer

Every year it is usually heard about pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj and they all come back with stories of where they were lied to and deceived. Yet, it has become the norm in our community to be lied to before you travel. Since the visit is often one of the spiritual tourist attractions for pilgrims, so travel and accommodation are frequently terrible. Stories of disgracefully such as bad hotels, battered buses and dreadful flight choices that take long waits at foreign airports are common among returning pilgrims. Now it is also deceiving with Umrah pilgrims. Thus, if you want to make your sacred journey in safe hands then you should Book December Umrah Packages with Flight through the registered travel agency.

Khalid Pervez, the head of Association of British pilgrims the UK says many of those making the trip are being denied the basic consumer and travel protections to which they are entitled – and that the authorities have shown little interest in tackling the problem.

Stories of deceiving

Up to 25,000 UK based Muslims travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the major pilgrimage (Hajj) every year spending an estimated £125m. For that purpose, pilgrims save for years to finance the typical three-week trip.

The Khan family said that they had spent £4,000 a head to go to Saudi Arabia through agents but when they had arrived in Mecca they had been disconnected into their different genders and had forced to share very poor rooms with strangers including one decaying bathroom for eight people.

Tariq Khan and his family says, “We paid more than £16,000 to agents to perform the hajj but they got sharing a hotel bedroom with strangers and having to use filthy toilets and kitchens. Tariq Khan adds that many returning victims fail to complain because they are unaware of their rights, but also because travel agents manage to convince them that it will somehow “cheapen” the hajj experience.

The pilgrims' group from Rochdale in Greater Manchester complains that they have been ripped-off by one of the many deceitful travel agents that appear to a victim on the UK Muslim community. In the hotels in which they have dwelled had live wires coming out from the air conditioning and there was no facility to sit and to eat. The hotel was not for human staying overall. There were more than sixty people in our group, and everyone complained.

Ahmed Ali Minhas from Coventry is another victim who was promised four-star lodging, but he was cheated by agents and what he got was a far cry from that. He says that he paid £12,000 for himself, his wife and their son to visit Mecca and was promised four-star hotel accommodation but they themselves in unclean conditions and far off distance from the Grand Mosque than promised.

He adds that the tour operator rented rumpled buses to shuttle them to other places. They were waiting three hours in the Jeddah streets in the coach with no water and food, and there was no proper place to offer prayer. The flights home included a 17-hour stopover in Beirut, for which they had been promised hotel rooms. But when they arrived they didn’t have anything. They were forced to just wait in the airport where the shops would only take US dollars, and they had none, and no way of getting any. When they decided to return after performing the Hajj the things were same.