Goldtrail Holidays

Alan_Bowen

The CAA have certainly been paying claims, but last Thursday, so 4 months after the failure, they admitted they had just received another £6 million pounds worth of claims. These can only be from travel agents who haven't bothered to get their act together in the meantime. Well done to the person who took action against Bookable, there is no justification for admin charges and claims of 12 month delays, if Bookable had done their job correctly, everyone should have been able to make a valid claim against the CAA with no deductions at all

mecrazybenz

Ponkle22 wrote: »

Wow, well done!

Now for the rest of us: HAS ANYONE BEEN PAID FOR THEIR GOLDTRAIL LOSS YET???

I'm still waiting....

Yup still waiting..........got the acknowledgment letter from the CAA months ago. I can see this taking many more months still....:mad:

Ponkle22

You've received an acknowledgement?! I've not received an acknowledgment from Bookable (aka shockable) or the CAA. Anyone else from Bookable had an acknowledgement?

Alan_Bowen

The suspicion is that Bookable hasn't actually sent any claims to the CAA yet. When Goldtrail went bust Bookable seemed to be saying they had their own inurance policy which would pay out but that may or may not exist. You need to contact Bookable and ask for a CAA reference number or name of their insurers, otherwise it seems no one is going to get paid.

Ponkle22

OMG! Will do. Thanks for heads up Alan. Gulp.....

Dance_Warrior

Stupid me - I had thought that ABTA would actually investigate matters as an ombudsman - instead they just pass on any old %£&&* from Bookable. Anyone got a Plan B ??
The Travel Association
ABTA Ltd 30 Park Street, London SE1 9EQ
T:+44 (0)2031170500 I F: +44 (0)20 3117 0581 19th November 2010
Further to our previous letter where we advised we were approaching Bookable Holidays Ltd for their comments.
Please find enclosed the response received from our member. We do 'hope that they have managed to explain the matter to your satisfaction. However, should this not be the case we would advise you to respond direct to Bookable Holidays Ltd outlining your dissatisfaction. Should the matter still remain unresolved we wouid be obliged if you could forward copies of further correspondence so we may advise you further.
~ Affairs Team
Enc.
Registered in England No. 551311
Mrs Denise White
Consumer Affairs & Asst. Code Executive
ABTA Ltd
30 Park Street
London SE1 9EQ
BY POST AND EMAIL
11th November 2010
Dear Mrs White,
I refer to your letter dated 01 st November 2010.
Firstly, I would like to assure you that we are deeply disappointed that complaints have been made against Bookable Holidays; both directly and through ABTA. We pride ourselves on the high level of service that we provide to customers and we take our membership in ABTA very seriously. We are doing absolutely everything in our power to try to resolve the problems that we and our customers are facing as a result of failure of Goldtrail Travel Limited ("Goldtrail") and Kiss Flights (" Kiss").
As you may be aware, Bookable Holidays was selling packaged holidays (pursuant to the terms of our ATOL) to customers using segments offered by both Goldtrail and Kiss. It was our general practice to book and pay for such segments in advance (principal-to-principal), as and when our customers made the bookjngs with us. As such, when Goldtrail and Kiss ceased trading earlier this year, large sums of money that Bookable Holidays had received from customers in respect of their holidays had already been paid to the two suppliers prior to their respective failures. We now consider that these sums are irrecoverable.
In light of the recent and numerous high profile travel operator failures, however, we had actively taken steps to protect ourselves and, more importantly, our customers against such an event. This protection took the form of a Complete Supplier Failure Insurance policy. The policy was entered into with a reputable underwriter, AmTrust Europe Limited (formerly IGI Insurance Company Limited) to insure that, in the event one of Bookable Holidays' suppliers became insolvent, its customers would not suffer.
After we learned that Goldtrail had failed, we took immediate action to mitigate any effect on our customers. The day after the collapse, we began to contact our affected customers by telephone to notify them of the problems. If an email address had been provided at the time of booking, we also emailed customers within two to three days of the collapse. As soon as possible, Bookable Holidays posted an appropriate claim form to the customer (this was within two to three weeks for Goldtrail, and one to two weeks for Kiss) requesting them to supply proof of payment and copies of receipts and invoices. As soon as these completed forms were received, we began to collate the necessary information that would be required for AmTrust to process the claim (failure to supply the required documentation will result in AmTrust refusing to process the claim).
In parallel with this, we have been in constant contact with AmTrust in an attempt to claim on our insurance policy for the benefit of our customers. Unfortunately, significant delays caused by AmTrust in processing a specimen claim that we submitted shortly after the failures has resulted in corresponding delays to our customers. Please note that we and our broker have been chasing AmTrust on a weekly basis since the beginning of this crisis in order to reach a satisfactory resolution for our customers.
I am pleased, however, to inform you that I now believe we are making progress with AmTrust, which has completed its review of our specimen claim. Subject to a few final issues that should be resolved shortly, I am optimistic that we will be able to start processing customer claims and passing these on to AmTrust for settlement. This will enable us to begin to issue refunds to our customers in the near future.
I understand that some of your representatives have queried the administration fee that we are applying to refunds to our customers. The affected customers who are eligible to apply for refunds following the collapse of Goldtrail and Kiss contracted with Bookable Holidays under its terms and conditions
(the "Terms and Conditionsff).
Paragraph 3.3 of the Terms and Conditions states:
3.3 Acts of terrorism and other events beyond our control By their very nature these cannot be foreseen. The Forelgn & Commonwealth Office website has advice for travellers at: Tour Operators and Airlines are guided by advice from the FCO and may, in certain extreme circumstances, offer free cancellation (Subject of course to their own Terms and Conditions) .
Except where otherwise expressly stated in these booking conditions, we regret we cannot accept liability or pay any compensation where the performance, or prompt performance of our contractual obligations, is prevented or affected by, or you otherwise suffer any damage or loss as a result of, any event which we or the supplier of the service(s) in question could not, even with all due care, foresee or avoid. Such events may include (but are not limited to) war or threat of war, riot, civil strife, actual or threatened terrorist activity, industrial dispute, natural or nuclear disaster, adverse weather conditions, fire and all similar events outside our control.
When a cancellation of anv travel arrangement is made due to unforeseen or unavoidable reasons then Bookable Holidays has the right to charge an administration levy,
Whilst Bookable Holidays does not seek to charge any cancellation fee as a result of the failure of Goldtrail and Kiss, you will, of course, understand that Bookable Holidays (like many other suppliers) reserves the right to charge an administration levy in such circumstances because of the irrecoverable and substantial administrative costs that are associated with such events. Whilst I appreciate our customers may not wish to pay this charge, it remains an unavoidable effect of the failure of such large suppliers as it is not economically feasible for Bookable Holidays to absorb the additional administrative costs placed upOn it by dealing with such a high number of refunds. Indeed, to do so may well cause Bookabfe Holiday's considerable and irreparable financial damage, which could adversely affect our customer-base as a whole. Instead, and in accordance with the Terms and Conditions under which we provide services to our customers, we have exercised our right to apply a reasonable administration charge. We have assessed this amount to be £40, as it takes into account the reasonable charges that we have incurred by having to pay sales staff a fixed salary to handle the claims when they would otherwise have been earning commission as well as the cost of postage, phone calls, lost revenue and wasted advertising costs.
We are now in the process of sending an update to each of our customers to inform them on the progress that we have made to date. In instances where we are aware that a customer has already made a complaint to us or to ABTA, we will provide a bespoke response to address their individual concerns. We will also endeavour to keep all of our affected customers up-to-date on the progress of their refunds in the coming weeks.
I hope that you are able to recognise that we are doing everything in our power to honour our contractual obligations with customers as well as the obligations imposed on us as a result of our membership to ABTA. We take this matter very seriously and are working tirelessly to resolve it and give our customers the high level of service that they have come to expect from us.
I trust that this letter sufficiently sets out the current issues that we, and our customers, face and what we are doing to resolve them. We will strive to keep you updated as to our progress with our customers and AmTrust and will appreciate your help and support so that we can work together to resolve this issue in an expedient manner and satisfy our affected customers,
If you have any further queries which need an urgent response, please address them to Samantha Michael who is the Customer Service Manager at Bookable Holidays.
Yours sincerely,
Jason Dwyer
Managing Director
Bookable Holidays Limited

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Needless to state I've heard nothing directly from Bookable

mikesonu

Ya its a great opportunity i m also going to book now.

Ponkle22

Thanks Dance Warrior. I'm grateful you have posted this BUT, I'm struggling to understand the letter you pasted as I don't know your situation in the first instance. Can you explain please what your situation was? I am wondering if you bought a package from Bookable just before it crashed?

I really want to understand your situation so the letter makes more sense to me.

HXDave

We have assessed this amount to be £40, as it takes into account the reasonable charges that we have incurred by having to pay sales staff a fixed salary to handle the claims when they would otherwise have been earning commission as well as the cost of postage, phone calls, lost revenue and wasted advertising costs.

I suppose you could argue that the £40 'admin fee' should be per application / booking, as opposed to 'per person'. after all, from my experience in dealing with claims like this, processing a claim for 1 person (ie £40 charge) takes just as long as processing a claim for 4 people (ie £160 charge).

at £40.00 per person, they are probably making more money per person than the original booking would have made per person.

And just for reference, in the 20 years i have been in travel, never ONCE have i worked for an agency that charged a booking fee for doing something like this. I like to call it 'Customer Service', and it's done with a smile and always free of charge.

Alan_Bowen

Well now we know the truth, Bookable Holidays were acting as the tour operator, hence the reason there can be no claims from the CAA but after 22 years in the business, I have also never heard of a tour operator deducting costs which are not the fault of the customer. It was they who chose the suppliers, Goldtrail in this case, and it seems strange that since the company stopped trading in July, why it would take the insurance company this long to even get to the stage of discussing settlement of the claim. Most insurers say 'yes' or 'no' fairly quickly and the insurer named withdrew completely from the travel market at the end of last month, this might explain why!