Refund taxi fare

CLIVE_WALDER

I was booked on a flight from Birmingham to Montreal via Paris on 7 September.

The flight from Birmingham was 80 minutes late leaving because the engineer forgot to give the pilot the airworthiness certificate and he couldn’t be tracked down. This caused me to miss my connecting flight in Paris.

The carrier (Air France) put us up in a hotel about 30km from Paris overnight and promised a coach back to the airport the following day. The hotel tried on two occasions that evening to find out what time the coach was taking us back to the airport but could get no answer.

I arrived at breakfast at 8.25 the following morning only to find that the coach had left at 8am. I hadn’t been informed.

My belief is that as Air France transported me to and paid for my hotel accommodation then they should ensure that I got back to he airport the next day. In any case they should have told the coach driver the number of passengers to be picked up

In the end I had to get a taxi that cost €78 (£56). I tried to arrange a refund from the Air France desk at Charles de Gaulle Airport and was told to make the claim when I got back to the UK.

I have made four phone calls and sent three e-mails and on each occasion the promised reply has not materialised (in fact the only phone number quoted on the airfrance.co.uk website is for ticket reservations, they do not publish a customer relations phone number).

I have initiated a small claims procedure for the £56 which they say they are defending.

Are they saying that to frighten me to withdraw the claim?

Do I have a legal basis for reclaiming the taxi fare?

Any advice or comments would be welcome

martindow

Did you have to get a taxi? If public transport was feasible they could be defending on the basis that your claim is excessive.

Alan_Bowen

As Cityboy has pointed out, clearly some people must have got the coach back to the airport and if you were the only one who missed it, evidentially you may be in a weak position. Having said that, on the basis you do not live within 20 miles of Air France's office in London, it is going to cost them more to defend it than just pay up but some companies defend as a matter of principle. If they do defend, it will probably indicate 18 people missed the connection, they put you all up in a hotel and 17 appeared as instructed at 0800 the next morning but you did not. You are not at risk of having to pay their costs but if you lose and they have had to travel 100 miles to court, they can claim the travelling expenses.

bcl999

Same thing happened to me in Durban a few years ago - though it was the hotel itself which gave me the wrong time for the transfer coach. They arranged a cab and then I discovered when we got to the airport, he wanted paying! Was all ready for a long-distance fight with them after i got back but they never charged my card for all my incidentals so I let it drop as they came to more than the cab cost. Good luck with your claim.

By the way, 78euros = £56? Doesn't that work out at an exchange rate of 1.39?

martindow

Alan_Bowen wrote: »

You are not at risk of having to pay their costs but if you lose and they have had to travel 100 miles to court, they can claim the travelling expenses.

Is this correct? I thought that in the small claims process no costs can be claimed.

CLIVE_WALDER

My credit card debited me £56 so that's what I claimed.

They paid up in the end