by Tony Hetherington Liberated... Firm relents on New York fare refund
W.R. writes: On May 13 I booked a flight to New York departing in December at a cost of £1,403. The next day, I had to cancel. I requested a refund, but the agent Love Holidays said the flight provider Travel2 had refused. I agree that an administration charge would be justified, but forfeiting the full cost seems like a scam. THIS is not a scam, but it is unfair treatment of a customer who was caught out by the small print. Not just that, but it is small print you had never even read.
Love Holidays is a booking agent. It took your booking and passed it on to Travel2 which is a ‘consolidator’ – a sort of wholesaler or broker that deals in airline tickets. Travel2 put you on a British Airways flight.
Love Holidays offered to contact Travel2 to try to get a refund of taxes for you. That would have amounted to about £355. Or you might have been able to negotiate a change to a different date or destination for a fee of £150.
Travel2 told me it could not comment on any terms and conditions applied by Love Holidays. It explained it is a ‘trade-facing operator’ whose contract is with the travel agent and not the consumer. But when I looked into Love Holidays’ terms, what I found seemed to say the exact opposite.
It tells customers: ‘For all bookings your contract will be with the applicable service provider of your chosen arrangement (who may be the principal or the agent of the principal) and Love Holidays acts only as an agent on their behalf.’
So you – the customer – would be expected to find out who Love Holidays would use as the ‘service provider’, then establish whether that service provider is acting as an agent of yet another company, then study all those terms and conditions before you could understand what you were agreeing to.
Travel2 told me the ‘service provider’ means the particular airline – in your case, British Airways. It added: ‘Travel2 is bound by the airline’s terms and conditions.’
The bottom line is that you are supposed to be bound by the airline’s terms and conditions which you had not seen because you dealt with Love Holidays. It in turn dealt with Travel2 which provided the seat on a BA flight.
Back to Love Holidays which then had a rethink. It said: ‘All flights booked on the Love Holidays website are in line with airline and supplier terms and conditions.
‘We have been working hard to resolve this. In this instance, as a gesture of goodwill, Love Holidays will refund Mr R the total cost of his flight.’ A good result.
thisismoney.co.uk/hetherington