A CHARITY founder has issued a warning after a holiday from hell left him thousands of pounds out of pocket.

Reverse Rett co-founder Andy Stevenson, from Croft, booked a last minute five-day break to Majorca through travel agents Sunmaster in June after completing a 500-mile bike ride to raise funds for the charity.

After finding care for their two daughters who suffer from Rett syndrome, Andy and wife Rachel jetted off to Spain with their three-year-old son Finlay.

But problems began shortly after arriving at their hotel.

Andy said: "The hotel owner said that he had no booking for us and that this holiday company kept sending people to his hotel without paying him.

"He got really aggressive with me - him and his wife were shouting at me in Russian and they were both quite threatening and intimidating.

"We had to pay for that night, even though we'd already paid for the holiday, and we had to leave first thing the next morning.

"I had to go and hire a car and we spent the day trying to book into different places but there was nowhere available.

"We finally got into a hotel late on that afternoon and stayed there for the next four days, but the holiday was ruined because we were panicking about how we were going to pay for a hotel that ended up costing more than the whole holiday in the first place."

Originally paying £1,050 for the break, the family were forced to pay a further £1,100 for an alternative hotel with the unexpected car hire bringing the total cost of the holiday to £2,700.

But Andy and Rachel were only offered a 'paltry' amount of compensation from Sunmaster.

Former Culcheth High School pupil Andy added: "I made a complaint within an hour of getting home from the airport because we were so shook up by it.

"They started off by offering us £300 which I thought was insulting, and they went as far as £750 which still didn't come close to covering what we'd paid originally.

"I want to warn people about this company because they sent us into a dangerous situation.

"The knock-on effect is that my step-daughter, who has Rett syndrome, couldn't go on holiday this summer because we had no money.

"We set up a charity for our girls, and now we can't even take them on holiday because this travel company has blatantly ripped us off.

"It's been a bit of a shock to be honest.

"We went away because we were stressed in the first place, but we came back with more stress than we went with."

Sunmaster has declined to comment on the matter.