Operator changing holiday itinerary - am I legally entitled to a refund?

Ceiny24

A few weeks ago I booked a coach trip to Munich for this weekend's Champions League final through a sports travel company. For £199pp, we were due to leave London Victoria at 9pm this evening (Friday 18th), to arrive and check in to a hotel in Munich by 1pm on Saturday, and depart after breakfast on Sunday morning to return to London on Sunday night.

As Chelsea fans, we knew there was absolutely no chance of getting tickets for the match itself, but knew that being in Munich itself for the Final, and for seemingly such a good price, was too good an opportunity to miss. One of the attractions of this trip was also the departure time - leaving on Friday night meant that we wouldn't have to take any time off work.

On Tuesday (3 days before departure), the company sent us an email which contained the weekend's itinerary. The email informed us that we would now not be staying in a hotel in Munich, but in a hotel a couple of hours' drive away, and that the departure time on Friday was now 1pm, a whole EIGHT HOURS earlier than stated at the time of booking.

We got the travel company's manager on the phone as soon as we read the email and were told that their supplier had let them down on the accommodation, and that they'd miscalculated the time it would take to drive from London to Munich, hence the change in departure time.. We were told that we could cancel and receive a full refund, which we decided to do, as there was absolutely no point in going all that way to not even be staying in Munich anymore. The manager told us that all we had to do was to send him an email confirming that we'd like to cancel and he would then process our refund.

We heard nothing from them on Wednesday, and tried phoning them numerous times on Thursday - the few times we did get through to somebody we were told that they were working through all the emails and would get back to us. (Presumably these changes did not go down well with a lot of people!!)

Then this morning we were told that we would not in fact be receiving a refund after all, and were offered no explanation to support this decision. We asked to speak to the manager, as it was him who assured us on Tuesday that we would be refunded, and the response was "he's not taking any calls - you're probably better off taking it through the small claims courts".

I did some research and came across this in the Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tour Regulations Act of 1992:

Significant alterations to essential terms

12. In every contract there are implied terms to the effect that—

(a)where the organiser is constrained before the departure to alter significantly an essential term of the contract, such as the price (so far as regulation 11 permits him to do so), he will notify the consumer as quickly as possible in order to enable him to take appropriate decisions and in particular to withdraw from the contract without penalty or to accept a rider to the contract specifying the alterations made and their impact on the price; and

(b)the consumer will inform the organiser or the retailer of his decision as soon as possible.

I'm no expert, but in my opinion, they significantly altered an essential term of the contract - the advert and our booking confirmation clearly state that we would be staying in a hotel in Munich, and as such we were legally entitled to cancel without penalty upon notification of this change. There is also the matter of the inconvenience that the change in departure time would have caused had we decided to go ahead with the trip - bringing the departure time forward by 8 hours would have meant having to take potentially unpaid time off work, given the late notice.

We managed to talk to the manager about an hour or so ago, and were told that we would not be refunded because in his opinion, the only reason we want a refund is because we can't get tickets to the match! He changed his tune when he heard that we'd found legislation stating that we are entitled to a refund, and he simply replied "I don't know what legislation you're referring to, but I can't discuss this with you without anything in front of me. I'll call you back on Monday".

Am I right in saying that we are legally entitled to a refund given the significance and short notice of the changes to the itinerary? If so, I don't really want to have to go down the legal route to get it, so are there any tips out there for getting him to pay up without too much hassle?!

Dolly79_2

I've got a similar problem. Hopefully someone on here should be able to help.

mynameistallulah

Can you clarify how far away the new hotel is? How many miles, or what town etc ... or just the name of the hotel?

Ceiny24

The new hotel was in Guenzburg, 70+ miles from Munich.

mynameistallulah

In that case, I would say that the substance of the contract has fundamentally changed and you are entitled to a refund. It is like booking a trip to Wembley and being dropped in Oxford.

If you get nowhere with them on Monday, write a letter before action, stating your intention to issue a small claims action. If still no joy, you will need to issue a claim - not as difficult as it sounds. If you Google "letter before action" you will find some examples of letters you can send.

Alan_Bowen

I suspect this was selling something they never had, rooms in Munich have been like gold dust, one operator was quoted £1000 a room for 3 nights accommodation this weekend. What you bought was certainly a package holiday, and it certainly sounds like a major change to be 70 miles away but I suspect a lot of people are going to find a similar situation when they arrive tomorrow. I hope you took the name of the manager when he said you could have a refund, I suspect even the accommodation 70 miles away was more expensive than he expected and wanted to reduce costs by getting a few people to cancel. Later he discovered that too many people took up the option and now he can't fill the coach with paying passengers