xcapewithus

dizzyliz

pintofmilk wrote: »

I just checked the My Booking of Xcapewithus for a client who is currently in Portugal. The system says 'pending information from supplier' even the supplier (Transhotel) cancelled the booking on April 30th.

I hope the online system will be updated soon for the other bookings that we made.

QUOTE]

thats it im afraid - all bookings seem to be lost! i get that message ,i rang the hotel direct, the booking was made and has now been cancelled,
xcap-ewithus use hotelbeds, they didnt pay hotelbeds but hotelbeds made the booking with the hotels - thats why they were forced to cancel the booking as no payments have been receieved.

hawkesbaynz

I just happened to check my booking for two nights in Milan mid-May last week and found the link on my email told me they had gone into administration.

I emailed the company and had a message on my answer machine telling me that I would need to re-book and claim back from Mastercard.

Would I have heard if I had just gone off to Milan with the voucher I printed out in December?

redgun

Called the hotel again this evening and they still say the booking is confirmed but I suspect the cancellation has yet to filter through to them, status on xcapewithus is definitely "Booking Not Honoured"

Can anyone confirm if the change of status to "Booking Not Honoured" is sufficient proof to commence a credit card refund application?

Anyone tried to get money back yet?

pintofmilk

Start the ball rolling on your credit card refund ASAP. Booking not honoured means you are definitely not getting anything from Xcape.

All of my bookings say not honoured. I would be interested to hear from anyone who does find that their's is honoured... I suspect that this whole "check booking status" is a rouse to make us think that some bookings are OK when in fact none of them are.

EdCov

My understanding of the claim back procedure is that you open it with your bank, who will then raise a dispute with Xcape with us.

I suspect there are going to be quite a lot of these claims and therefore I would raise it straight away and then they will request evidence.

It seems that I will be protected because I paid with Visa Debit, and therefore there is a charge back procedure which will draw the money back from xcapewithus bank. The bank will pay it.

The beauty of this is that the bank will lose the money, since banks do not like losing money, if there has been any fraud committed then the banks will pursue this to try and get their money back.

Just realised in all the stress and hassle I forgot to say thanks to Jaxt who found out who Olympia Online were, I followed the web link and found an email address and contacted them. I have also thanked the posts now, sorry I should have done that before.


With a little help I have rebooked through https://www.topcosta.com, who are part of Olympia Online, who xcapewithourmoney made my booking with. They have been very sympathetic and very helpful.

What is strange is that my room did not appear back through others, but it did when I booked it https://www.topcosta.com. In fact it was a bit worrying because at one stage I thought I would not be able to book the hotel I wanted because there were no family rooms left, but it all worked out in the end.

MaFt

dizzyliz wrote: »

!!!!!!.
they have done this on purpose! - can nothing be done about it - its wrong, ok ive lost my money, i still have my flights, but this copany should be dealt with!!

yes yes, companies make themselves bankrupt on purpose cos they love having to lay off loads of staff and annoy customers and of course the CEO's love being jobless and having the weight of an entire company collapse on their shoulders...

be realistic here. yes it's crap and i've lost money too, but these things happen. woolworths went bust, did you accuse them of doing it on purpose?!

withabix wrote:

They are also ABTA members, unlike Xcapewithus, who were just money grabbing charlatans.

again, i feel that's a but harsh. i'd not heard of xscapewithus.com before i booked out first full family holiday november last year - i did my research and found a majority of good reviews. even people in this thread have commented on what a good company they were. going on what other users of xcapewithus.com had said i decided to book it. had i got even a hint of them being 'money-grabbing charlatans' i'd not have bothered booking.

MaFt

dooz

It said 'Booking not honoured' on my status and since I paid with my Maestro and didn't get travel insurance, I emailed them with a claim. I know I won't get anything which is so incredibly unfair. I am a student with a very limited income so I do feel like I have been robbed. I wish there was something I could do to at least get some of my money back!

I don't feel sorry for the company one bit, they could have done something about protecting their customers but by declaring themselves bankrupt they have essentially saved themselves from making further losses on our expense. All their accounts are frozen so I don't understand how banks can get money off them.

nico26

Feel sorry for all you lovely people losing your holidays. Hope you can get something out of it.
With all the good reviews the company seemed to have been getting and why you booked through it, is why no one picked up they were not Atol or Abta registered. These companies should not be allowed to operate and the industry should start to do something about it as it is happening all to often now.

MaFt

nico26 wrote: »

why no one picked up they were not Atol or Abta registered. These companies should not be allowed to operate

why not? ATOL protects flights - xcapewithus were accommodation only so why should they pay for ATOL membership when they don't sell flights? ATOL protection would have done nothing here.

ABTA membership is optional ONLY for online accommodation only companies. From ABTA themselves via (travel-rants.com/2007/05/19/abta-where-are-you/)
"Only online accommodation only suppliers for whom financial protection within ABTA is optional. Most have chosen to do so however and any who do not must make this clear and offer insurance to customers."

I honestly can't recall if xcapewithus actually offered that kind of insurance to us when booking? can anyone recall or have a copy of the site for any reason?! thing is, how do we claim compensation from them if they're no longer trading...?!

MaFt

redgun

Got a confirmation email from my hotel in venice confirming that hotelbeds have cancelled my booking today, presumably due to xcape having no ability to pay their bills with hotelbeds

Have now re-booked the exact same hotel at a slightly cheaper price with Travel Republic, they must also use hotelbeds as they had no rooms available when I looked yesterday, should have gone with Travel Republic in the first place but lesson learnt, paid by credit card to ensure double protection, worth paying the extra 2% in these uncertain times

Will now be contacting Barclaycard to claim a refund, hope it's not a long drawn out process

Hope everyone else manages to rebook at a reasonable price and gets some money back from these crooks!