Legal advice: package holiday operator delays refund

We are due on a Riviera river cruise starting in late September. Riviera have yet to formally admit the cruise is cancelled. Instead they are sending us increasingly frequent emails encouraging us to rebook next year. Their latest ploy was a request to fill in a survey, the wording of which could have been used to imply we had cancelled. This I declined to submit and will continue to sit tight until they announce it has been cancelled, when I will demand a refund.

I recently had to fight TravelUp for my refund for 3 months (recovering some of the money via a chargeback with my bank). They have illegally been charging cancellation fees since March and some members are still waiting and been doing so for over six months. A facebook group has been setup to help the thousands of others affected, as they initially closed their phone lines and stopped answering emails for nearly 2 months, meanwhile leaving customers stranded around the world, who had to pay their own way home. I know of one lady over £4000 out of pocket to this day!

My advice to anyone experiencing the same is that the EU Denied Boarding legislation is VERY clear that full refunds are expected within 7 days, in the event of airline cancellations. TravelUp have decided they are outside of the law and this doesn’t apply to them. They attempted to change their terms mid pandemic, but this is unlawful and EU/UK law overrides their terms in any case.

CMA guidelines talk about cancellation fees and ‘frustrated’ contracts. This term is used when goods or services have not been received and the sales contract is different from that originally agreed. This terms is effectively covered by the Consumer Rights Act 2015 on unfair terms and sales contracts. While I can’t vouch for your particular circumstances, it’s worth reading your sales contract about refunds.

So, if I can help just one person reading this and who’s experiencing the same issues with TravelUp or other unscrupulous travel agents, or companies is use these laws and just go to your bank and start a chargeback or section 75 claim. In the case of debit cards and chargebacks, you need to lodge a claim within 120 days of departure date, so don’t delay. You need to provide some evidence of cancellation, receipts and at least 1 email showing you’ve attempted to contact the company (although not necessary to engage with or wait for a response) and quote the above laws and leave it your bank.

As a Facebook group, we have been very successful in helping customers win their money back from the banks. This is the only way, as TravelUp have decided to take a minimum £50 per booking, but in some cases £75 per person + 2%. I am aware some customers have had over £600 in fees taken, while others just are not responded to by the company.

TravelUp stated in response to a newspaper article on them last week about their crap service to customers that they’ve posted 46k refunds. At £50 cancellation fee = £2.3m they’ve made out of affected customers. It’s truly disgusting behaviour that Government allow to happen.

Very surprised not to see Villa Plus included in this section if the growing dissatisfaction represented on social media is anything to go by. Our holiday in September/October was a victim of the FCDO’s advice on travel to Zante; for weeks we had no info other than the website as phoning was pointless, emails just got generic replies and even a written complaint went unacknowledged. We have registered complaints with ABTA and Trading Standards and have now resorted to a bank charge-back to recover our money. Even though we feel that we have a cast iron case (we never received any final travel documentation) we still have a nagging worry that they will contest the refund. And still we receive regular emails about 2021 bookings. Are they trying to get deposits to enable them to pay off this year’s refunds? Sounds like some kind of Ponzi scheme to me. Villa Plus are obviously hanging onto money handed over in good faith maybe to alleviate cash flow problems but the lack of service surely will be counter-productive. Covid 19 is not their fault but we will never use them again.