Advice about cancellation rights

Addis85

Hello,

We booked a holiday to Turkey with a1 travel 1 week for £800. We just received an email from them saying that they booked our flights with Holidays 4 uk and therefore would need to contact them. We did so and were told that we were entitled to a refund on our flights but not our accommodation as it was booked through someone else.bas you can imagine all flights to Turkey have shot up an price and we cannot afford to form out another £400 to fly to Turkey for our already paid for holiday.

Where do we stand on being able to cancel our holiday as a1 are adamant that we can't so we stand to lose around £500

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

HXDave

Unfortunately, it's as A1 state. You did not book a package, instead booking flights & hotel seperately. Therefore whilst you should (depending on how they were booked) get a full refund through the ATOL scheme for your flights, as the accommodation was booked under a seperate contract, with a seperate supplier, there is no reason why the accommodation owner should cancel the accommodation free of charge.

Sorry to harp on, but my advise 9and yes, you will say this coming from a travel agent, but yet again, it has proved to be the best option in cases like this) is to book a fully protected package holiday through a travel agent who usea single tour operator for the whole thing (or who provides a full ATOL service).

Yes, your holiday through A1 travel may have been cheaper at time of booking, but i guess it's gonna cost you a whole lot more now.................

HXDave

bagand96

As Dave said they are probably correct. It is all spelt out quite clearly on their website T&Cs. Do double check all of your paperwork for your accommodation though to see the cancellation terms.

There is nothing wrong with booking these dynamic packaged holidays, as long as you understand what you are in fact booking and check the conditions. Some of the agents are better than others. At least one forum member has been able to cancel there hotel booking with Travel Republic only loosing an admin fee.

spiro

I think I have seen mention on these forums of some type of holiday insurance that covers situations like this. Sorry dont remember what its called.

Alan_Bowen

The insurance is supplier failure insurance but even that can be a minefield so read what you are buying before committing yourself.

At the moment the CAA are re writing rules so that agents who are selling what look like packages but aren't will have to take full responsibility for refunding the whole cost of the holiday or replacing the flights if, as in this case and Goldtrail, and Sun4u and Kiss Flights and all the others before them disappear. At present the intended date for the change will be January 1st next year but in the meantime, please stop and ask what you are buying. If its not a package holiday then any money you save in the original purchase is lost when half the holiday disappears. That isn't moneysaving in the longer term at all.

I fear lots of agents selling 'cheap' holidays to Turkey have been using Holidays 4 U without telling the customer. After the disaster of Goldtrail last year, the CAA warned all agents this year that if they didn't tell the customers the truth and pass on the invoice from a failed operatorthey simply will not refund the money at all. That leaves a lot of agents at risk of failing themselves, ABTA has also warned agents to make sure they are acting legally but I suspect we are about to find a few that haven't.

If business was bad last year, it's even worse this year and the financial news this morning isn't going to make things better, don't buy the cheapest this summer as it may become the most expensive mistake you make