Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

worriedfirsttimebuyer

Quick one from me...after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with Resolver this autumn, I got a cheque today for £574 (400 euros each) off Thomson.
Straightforward 7 hour delay to Kos. Plane had a mechanical fault which was fixed quickly and then the crew were out of hours, so it was operational. Very pleased!

legal_magpie

well done. It seems as if Thomson are now taking the claims seriously and at an earlier stage

bobobski

Hi gang, I'm about to submit my claim to court because, after first hearing from them with their generic "we'll get back to you in 28 days" email on 2 September and multiple chasers by me, I've heard nowt from Thomson. My claim is for delay compensation but also compensation for various other items, including their failure to provide food and water (during a 9 hour delay), a member of cabin crew yelling at me at midnight for nothing, for lying about the cause and length of the delay, and other items.

As such, I'm not sure which court to apply to. Any ideas? I told Thomson as a courtesy that I would give them until 20 December but am fully expecting them not to reply and want to be ready to submit on 21 December.

Vauban

bobobski wrote: »

Hi gang, I'm about to submit my claim to court because, after first hearing from them with their generic "we'll get back to you in 28 days" email on 2 September and multiple chasers by me, I've heard nowt from Thomson. My claim is for delay compensation but also compensation for various other items, including their failure to provide food and water (during a 9 hour delay), a member of cabin crew yelling at me at midnight for nothing, for lying about the cause and length of the delay, and other items.

As such, I'm not sure which court to apply to. Any ideas? I told Thomson as a courtesy that I would give them until 20 December but am fully expecting them not to reply and want to be ready to submit on 21 December.

My advice is to focus on things that the law says you can be compensated for - arguing that you deserve compensation for being shouted out by staff will just damage the credibility of your claim.

Starting a court case is a serious business, so make sure you read up on the whole process properly, else you could find yourself coming a cropper. There is an online guide from the government about bringing a small claim, and you should have a read of my guide too.

Good luck with your claim.

bobobski

Thanks Vauban - I tried to find your guidance but none of the links I came across seemed to work.

Clearly I'd rather not go to court but from reading on here it seems the only way to get their attention is to serve them with papers. They say 28 days, then 56, but it's been over 100 days and I haven't had anything other than auto responses back and an email telling me to email a different address (which I did).

One of the other things in my claim is that they had us standing on an in-use runway for an hour and a half, in tropical weather, with no water offered and we weren't allowed to sit down. I understand your point about focusing on their legal wrongs (I am a lawyer, although not in this field) but I'd like to think a court would take these sorts of factors into account when assessing their reasonableness. Obviously not an issue for statutory compensation, but if you have terrible customer experience then you are entitled to ask for compensation, and given that their legal wrongs are sufficient to bring an additional claim, I think these items could be relevant? They also go towards the reasons for the delay, one of which was an insistence on everybody sitting in the correct seat... long story but not calling the flight, waiting for everybody to board (as if by magic) and keeping unallocated people standing on the tarmac by planes taking off and landing contributed to the excessive delay paints a bit of a picture. They tried to blame bad weather when there was none - it was a sunny day and another Thomson flight left for Manchester right next to us.

I'm just not sure whether the small claims court is appropriate for a claim like this? It looks like that is the route to go down - but if they lose, they have to refund me the court fee? I really hope it doesn't get to trial but I will take it that far if I have to, and it looks like I'm going to have to.

On a related note, does anybody have the statutory reference to hand re food/water after 3(?) hours' delay? I can't find it

bobobski

Sod's law, just found it. Doh!

revolution1978

I am making a claim and sent my forms off in the post as it is a joint claim. Thomson are defending the case and I need to complete the next lot of forms. As the case is in joint names I have had two letters for each party: do I need to complete them both for each party name or just one and put in both names?

DorisTrousers

E mail received from Thomson.

They have offered to settle in full, but have used todays exchange rate rather than what was claimed on the form, which was the date of the delay. Also, as I expected, they have flatly refused to pay statutory interest.

The exchange rate difference, and the effect of statutory interest refusal, is an effective difference in total of over £600. Not asking anyone to tell me what I should do, but I would appreciate the thoughts of all you good people.

Vauban

If you claimed interest in your court claim, you are entitled to ask for it. The rate of exchange issue is a red herring though - they pay you the equivalent in Euros at the time of the judgement, not the incident.

So if the interest is worth a lot of money, I'd hang on in there. Though there's no guarantee you'd get it, of course.

DorisTrousers

I claimed the exchange rate at the time, which made the claim £3,348 and I wrote on the court form that I was claiming statutory interest at 74p per day as well. No amount was specified of course as impossible to calculate when, if ever, they would look to settle. Does that count?

If I decide to hang on, do I inform the court that I don't accept their offer? Thomson contacted me by e mail, and copied the court in. Is it acceptable to reject the offer that way, or do I need to do it through the post?