Ski Freedom?

A snowHead

Never seen so many writers from Pravda in one place. Amazing.

A snowHead

I have just returned from Verbier having stayed with Ski Freedom.

Chalet Apartment Valsorey is one of their budget options, but it is in a fantastic location - about as close to the Medran lift as you can get.

The Chalet was run by James. His food was good, always on time and he was a very sociable and cheerful host. As with most budget options, James was working within a tight budget, so don't expect an overflowing plate with limitless 'seconds'.

As with most budget-end ski chalets, it was quite small, but I don't tend to lounge around ski chalets, so that doesn't really bother me. The bathrooms were not luxurious but clean enough.

In short, I paid a budget price and I got a cheerful and honest budget product. No problem. If you want to be pampered and you get stressed about little stains on bed sheets etc. then you really need to move up the price ladder.

Finally, my experience of dealing with Ski Chalet's owner has been fine. I pre-paid for a two-way transfer from Geneva, which I didn't use in the end. Chris L promptly refunded me the money for the transfer in full, no questions asked.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Ha no way. Brilliant stuff.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

It's just incredible you then decided to do a google search on the company to find a thread, to join the forum, just to post a glowing report.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

DAVROS,

You'll need to Register first of course.

Don't know what to think of this. Very weird that's for sure haha!

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

D
N
I
W

After all it is free

Hate dingbats Evil or Very Mad

There's something distinctly fishy with all of these first time posters, they're all 'just back from' or 'just returned from', I wonder if they all know each other.

Does snowheads store IP addresses of posters? Might be interesting to see if any are posting from the same location.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

TotallyBoard, More like a few beers for free if you post a glowing report...

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

TotallyBoard, at least their comments are relevant and make a contribution to the debate unlike a couple of the more recent/vacuous posts Evil or Very Mad

snow reports

I have never stayed wit hSki Freedom but guests should bear in mind that Verbier is ridiculously expensive and you cannot compare like for like in terms of price with resorts such as La Plagne, Les Arcs, Alpe d'Huez etc.

Jivebaby, I'm sorry but I don't take a first time post offering either a glowing report or a slagging as relevant, particularly when there are so many of them. Unusual activity as the banks would say.

I can accept a first time post starting a thread and knocking a company (Ski Beat anyone), but so many follow up reports, particularly the glowing ones, are odd. FWIW whoever claimed to be fropm SF could have done a better job ok taking this offline and into a private discussion. Crystal, I think, did a far better PR job in tidying up a compalint.

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I said in my post on this thread on 4th January that there was more that I could say, but to try to be fair to Ski Freedom I decided to leave it at that. As the eulogies have become more frequent however I have decided that enough is enough so here is some more detail.

I booked by phone and was told that a 30% deposit would be taken from my account as stated on their website and had an email a day or so later confirming that. I then noticed when the transaction came though that they had taken 50%. That in itself was not a problem for me, however I sent an email seeking clarification about what had happened and I also wanted to make sure there was no mistake with the final payment. I received no reply so ended up phoning about ten days later. “Oh yes I know” I was told, “we took the wrong payment didn’t we”. So they obviously already knew something was wrong but could not be bothered to contact me.

I was away for three weeks in early November and sent an email on my return asking for confirmation of the transfer arrangements. Again no reply so I had to phone again to get the information I needed.

Those were the only two emails I sent to Ski Freedom and my only phone calls were the ones I have mentioned. It was not even if I was the kind of customer that was asking for a lot of attention.

On the outward transfer there was not enough storage space for all the luggage. We were told “We were not expecting so many people to bring their own equipment”. We were all there for the Warren Smith course so surely common sense suggests that a significant number of people on a ski course would be likely to have their own kit? Why did they not ask us when we booked the transfers? Eventually two of the passenger seats were taken up with luggage and off we went.

When we were about to sit down for dinner that evening two more blokes turned up at the chalet who had been left behind at Geneva. They said they were at Geneva in good time, but they could not find a Ski Freedom rep and it appeared that nobody went to find them. The contact phone numbers they were given were also unavailable so they ended up making their own arrangements. Mind you there would have been no space in the vehicles for them because of the luggage anyway!

The resort manager gave us the usual briefing before dinner and said that breakfast would be served from 7.15 in the morning. The chalet hosts then arrived and after a pleasant enough first meal, said goodnight and that they would be back in the morning to provide breakfast at 8.00 a.m. When we told them that we had been told 7.15 they looked at one another in amazement. We then agreed on 7.30 which we were happy with. They served breakfast as agreed and all seemed fine, but when we got back in the evening we were told that the chalet hosts had quit.

Then finally came the homeward transfer. It was the second day of the first huge snowfall and it appears that somebody switched on the wind screen wipers on one of the vehicles before clearing the foot of snow off the wind screen. Result – no wind screen wipers. We then transferred all the luggage to another minibus, took both vehicles down into the village to meet a third minibus where more luggage transfers followed. I will not go into all the details but we eventually left forty five minutes late. I understand that everyone eventually got their flights but I expect that some of them were a close call.

The whole approach by Ski Freedom seemed to be a sort of it will be all right on the night approach but unfortunately it was not all right. To call them laid back would be an under statement.

There is still more I could add but I will leave it for now.

All the issues we had were resolvable and if Ski Freedom have indeed got their act together then good luck to them. I believe they do however still need to look at their pricing for places like the Anneto in low season

A snowHead

Very disorganised and focussed purely on profit margins…, overcharging guests, providing low quality food, making promises they can’t keep, and overworking/underpaying/mistreating staff which naturally results in low team morel and poor work ethic.

This complaints go back a few years, and things have not changed. The owner is disorganised and does not know how to run a business properly. The reason this company is still in operation is because of the high demand for the ski resort and lack of supply of accommodation, particularly in the low-mid end range.

To those considering working for Ski Freedom – find another employer, you will not last the season.

Please see details below.

On a number of occasions guests complained that they had not been shown the correct photographs for their chalets. Apparently a problem with an agent, but this was not rectified during the season. Only one set of guests were upgraded on complaining, a few were so furious they demanded a refund and found elsewhere to stay.

There are no chalet staff returners, which is very rare for a ski company. This is because of how poorly staff are treated, half hand in their notice and the other half were fired (some for genuine reasons however somewhat caused by low morel, others for made-up reasons because Ski Freedom ended up being overstaffed, particularly after Christmas or didn’t want to pay the end of season bonus).

Staff receive no real training, only one member of the team attended a short cooking course prior to joining, and only one member had previous experience as a chalet cook. The interview process consists of drawing a plate, knife, folk and wine glass on a piece of paper to make sure they know their left from right. The resort manager had no prior travel industry experience.

Ski Freedom claim that staff spend a week training before the season begins. This week is completely unpaid and consists of each member of cooking a 1-2 course meal only, show they can make a bed and then deep cleaning all of the chalets all day, sounds like slave labour and taking advantage of young people to me.

One member of staff was fired for poor food hygiene then was asked to cook during their two-week notice period.

There are not temperature gauges on all of the fridges (a legal requirement), and one fridge was known to be broken and not repaired.

A set of guests changed booking dates, from the 3rd week of January to the 2nd week, this was grated but with a 2000chf fee for ‘peak week’ (note the resort was dead that week and no other holiday company describes that as a peak week).
Due to their chalet not being available for the first night, these guests were offered ‘the most luxurious chalet in the portfolio with an warm open fire and champagne waiting for them on arrival, and an easy private transfer to their chalet the next day’ …. reality: they had one of the older style chalets in the resort, quite far away from town, they had to light their own fire, drink the only two beers in the fridge and were served a burned chocolate mousse for dessert because their chalet guy couldn’t cook (how do you even burn a chocolate mousse?).

A member of staff complained to the owner about the 40-50 year old resort manager harassing them, this was not taken seriously and the staff member was given a written warning instead. It was only when a set of guests made the same complaint that the company took action.

One member of staff had no permanent accommodation so rotated between whichever chalet was supposed to be empty.
Annoying for the member of staff (who later quit because of this situation as well as not being paid as promised), but perhaps worse for the guests that turned up for their booking to find someone staying there already, this occurred on two separate occasions.

The owner’s dog attacked a member of staff without provocation, this was not the first time the animal has bitten a human, yet even after this the dog was not muzzled or kept on a lead around people.

The company is very disorganised. As a guest you could turn up to an unprepared chalet, potentially with someone not checked out yet, your driver is likely to be late for pick-ups, and your chalet cook could have prepared a meal for 5 when you are 6 or missed out a vegetarian because of being given the wrong information.

As chalet staff, you could have finished your scheduled responsibilities so go skiing, then get called off the mountain by the resort manager demanding you go clean a chalet which was missed off the schedule by mistake. This happened every week. If you’re skiing over in one of the far valleys when you take the call it’s impossible to get back in decent time, you’re disciplined for this and guests turn up to an unfinished chalet. Changeovers were not only at weekends (as promised) as the company takes many short-term bookings.

Staff accommodation was very overcrowded (11 people in a 4 single-sized bedroom, 1 double bedroom chalet). Even the boiler room with brick walls was turned into a bedroom and two members of staff (not a couple) had to share a double bed.
The electricity (and hot water) kept cutting out due to overloading the circuit and this may not be fixed for up to 2 days.
This accommodation was based a 30-40 minute walk from the centre of town in Patier (20 minutes away was promised). An 18-year-old chalet girl got mugged walking home from work one evening (don’t expect the driver to pick you up).

One member of staff suffered an injury, which put them out of work for approximately 4 weeks. On returning to work, at the first payday after two weeks work this member of staff was told they had no salary due to owing the company for their accommodation during their time out of action. Then was told they only had a job for one week more (despite having a contract until the end of the season) because Ski Freedom felt the staff member wasn’t able to complete their job duties properly…funny, that one week more happened to be when they needed another cook, after that there were not as many catered weeks left in the season so essentially the company would be overstaffed.
This was a complete shock to the member of staff who was told not to worry about anything whilst on sickness, that they could come back to work as normal once the injury had healed and was also one of the two sharing a double bed – not as if the company could make money from renting the room.
In addition, sick pay (Swiss insurance pays approx 70% of your base salary whilst you’re unable to work due to medical reasons) was withheld by the company for approximately 6 weeks, despite repeated requests from the member of staff and even after the member of staff received proof that insurance company had made these payments each week to Ski Freedom. This person ran up credit card debts during that time. Absolutely terrible way to treat a young person. Completely taking advantage.

Staff are promised a full on Christmas dinner on the 5th of January after the peak weeks are over – expect this to be tartiflette made out of leftovers, where you’ll have to clean the chalet afterwards.

Only one member of original staff lasted until the end of the season to receive their end of season bonus. However, even they were disappointed as they were promised a ski guiding trip and an additional lump sum for staying on when others quit.

A snowHead

How do you fit in then, ms / mr VL? Are your grapes a bit on the tart side?

Help!!

Ski Freedom?

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