Flight Cancellation Fees - Extortion?!

grainged

My partner and I had been planning a trip to Australia for this summer and were saving like crazy to afford it. We'd booked our flights, hotels and everything, but then out of the blue my partner lost her job courtesy of a business cut-back. Due to this, we've had to cancel our planned trip as we can simply no longer afford it.

Our flights were booked with Qantas and, to our shock, we've been charged £300 per ticket in cancellation fees. I fully appreciate that companies will charge cancellation fees but:
1) It's not as though we cancelled at the last second; we've given them ~3 months notice
2) £600 in cancellation fees for tickets that came to ~£3,000 constitutes a 20% charge! Surely this is nothing more than profiteering on the part of Qantas and borderline extortion?!

I wondered if anyone else has come across such a situation and whether anything came of it? I just fail to believe that businesses can be allowed to get away with such high levels of charges and find myself questioning the legality of this.

DG.

richardw

Qantas does not make money with £699 fares to Australia, extra revenue from cancellations is essential to profitability.

Voyager2002

Many air tickets do not allow any refunds on cancellation, so Qantas are actually more generous than the norm.

Anyway, virtually all travel insurance policies would cover cancellation due to redundancy, so make a claim. (You did arrange insurance as soon as you had paid for your tickets?)

Caz3121

looking at their site Qantas offer 2 different fare types UK/OZ...Walkabout and Fully Flexible....it is your choice when you book which one you select

The fully flexible gives a full refund on cancellation and the Walkabout has the £300 fee
looking at the fares for random dates a £1500 Walkabout fare can be bought as a £2600 fully flexible so you would have needed to spend an additional £1100 each to be able to get a full refund.....