Holiday company saying it's not booked!

clarenic

Hello

Well, where to start?

I booked a holiday online on 3 September for August 2012 and got a very good deal, including a free child place.

Rather stupidly I didn't print/save the booking reference, instead thinking I'd be safe having the email on my Outlook and still on the Yahoo server. Due to computer issues, I had to recreate my Outlook profile, in doing so I've managed to tick the box saying that I want to remove all the emails from the server. Then I've managed to delete the confirmation email from Outlook when ploughing through the 2,000+ emails that it re-downloaded when I recreated my profile. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I don't have the email anymore. I've tried unsuccessfully to restore through Outlook and I'm waiting to hear from Yahoo as to whether they can help.

The £250 deposit left my bank account on 5 September. When we got in touch with the tour operator to try and get our booking reference (so we could login online and pay the remainder of the deposit), we were told they had no record of our booking. The tour op are trying to tell us that the money was on hold by the bank for some reason (there was plenty of money to cover the deposit). I've spoken to my bank today who assure me the money is cleared and has left my bank account. They advised me to speak to the tour op again and if I still have no luck to contact them and they would start a fraud investigation.

I feel fairly confident that we'll get that £250 back, but that's not the point - we've got no chance of getting a free child place now and the holiday has shot up in price by around a thousand pounds.

Does anyone have any advice for us please? I've been trying to find contact details for the tour op head office but haven't been successful as yet.

Thanks in advance!

Clare

NCISROCKS

Unfortunately there's a lot of coincidences, which I feel goes against you.

clarenic

Just that a computer fluff meant that I lost all my emails! The tour op has taken £250 out of my bank account . . .

somethingcorporate

But you cannot prove what it was for since you managed to lose / delete the email confirmation.

I am not sure what good contacting the head office would achieve, could you call customer services and get them to resend the confirmation?

clarenic

To get them to look into things further . . . The bank are adamant that they've released the money, so much so they're willing to start a fraud investigation if the tour op keep saying they've not received it. Phoning customer services won't help me because they say there is no record of the booking.

There is nothing else it could be for, our last holiday was all paid up and is behind us now.

somethingcorporate

The best you could expect then is your money back - if you cannot prove your booking the chance of you getting those terms (free child place etc) is slim to nothing.

clarenic

Well fingers crossed Yahoo come up trumps and can restore my emails.

Any more thoughts anyone?

vax2002

Go for the money, hard and fast..

Zandoni

Try looking in your browsers history.

clarenic

Hi, thanks but I tried that, I can view everything that I did right up until the actual payment and confirmation screens, probably because they're secure web pages.

Techhead_2

Have you asked the bank where/who the money has gone to?

I suppose what I'm saying is that - and do forgive me - given the unusual circumstances, is it possible you actually booked with another (possibly related) company?

It just seems to me very unlikely that a holiday company would also lose all trace of your booking at the same time as you lose all trace of the booking.