Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

panda_jamie

Hi lolly2u i feel your pain! I found it really frustrating to just keep getting ignored. I don't think there is any real pattern to what they do, i think it is just completely random. However, those who shout loudest will go to the front of the qeueue.
Have you emailed the legal team and the MD? I would do this every day for a week. You can certainly send the first one as a LBA. However you have already taken action with CEDR and i know if i was in your shoes i wouldn't want to start all over again. Don't be too polite in your letter or even bother with how upset you are simply state that CEDR found in your favour, date, amount and ask for immediate payment.
Also make sure CEDR are chaising.
I would give up with after sales team, they won't push anything.
Good luck!

lolly2u wrote: »

Hi I made a claim last May 16 after a 10h delay along with 4 other couples we were travelling with.they all received theirs in the July so obviously I got in touch with the after travel team to see why mine was not sent,they emailed Thomson and assured me that the delay was due to high quality numbers of claims and that it would be sent as soon as.so on a weekly basis I got back to them and all they could tell me is that they emailed Thomson daily and advised that I had not received payment.in October I decided to take it a step further and contacted CEDR.in Feb an adjudicator awarded me €1200 and ordered Thomson to settle within 14 days.of course still no response from them.CEDR then put it into the hands of their executive team to follow up still no response so I emailed them as to the next steps and they advised that they had no legal powers to force Thomson to pay they would not stop chasing this case until I was paid out. So this is where I am at now.any advice will be helpful Thanks.

I made a claim at the end of July last year for a delayed flight from Santorini to Bristol. I got no response from Resolver. I sent a L[COLOR="rgb(46, 139, 87)"]:mad:[/COLOR]BA and got no response. I filed court action through MCOL. Process was very slow and Thomson made some "interesting" challenges but never filed a defence. Court awarded me at beginning of April and i got the money today just as i was about to send the bailiffs in.
I do know someone else from that flight went through CEDR and got the money quicker but either way keep going everyone.
I did notice i seemed to get a better response when i cc'd the MD to my emails. Also if you need an email for the legal team it's customer.legal with the usual thomson email address, same for the MD, it's first name.surname as email prefix.
Don't bother trying to phone the legal team, they don't answer!
Me and my mother are using our newly received cash as spending money for a weeks holdiay later this month - decided we'd travel with Olympic this time!
Thanks everyone on the forum for all the advice you've given me.
If i can help anyone please shout
:j

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alisonmaui

Hi everyone,
Just thought I would set out my experience of claiming for a flight delay in case it is of help to anyone.

Very briefly, we flew to Florida in July 2015 with Thomson. The flight was delayed by 3 hours for "scheduled maintenance". Thomson tried to say the plane "arrived" 2 hours 55 minutes late but I obtained flight stats to show that was the time the plane landed on the runway. There is a European case (not binding put persuasive) that says the relevant time for compensation claims is the time at which at least one of the doors of the plane is opened (this was over 3 hours 5 minutes late in our case).

We claimed compensation (family of 4), Thomson rejected it saying the flight "arrived" 2 hours 55 minutes late. They then ignored our correspondence. I complained to the CAA but after 4 months the CAA wrote to say Thomson had not responded so they couldn't deal with our complaint but they thought we had a claim.

I then issued proceedings for a small claim. Thomson filed a defence maintaining their position. They then refused mediation and said they would defend the case at trial. However, they did not serve any evidence in support of their case and did not turn up at court. We attended the hearing, the Judge agreed with our interpretation of the law (doors open) and awarded compensation for all of us amounting to £1070. I then made an application for unreasonable costs against Thomson due to their unreasonable conduct. We were awarded costs in full £1095 so Thomson now owe us £2,165. If they don't pay, I will be sending in the Bailiffs to recover the debt!

I was amazed at how poorly Thomson treated us and although the court process is not easy and quite stressful, it is worth pursuing it. I am happy to share the documents I created if it would help anyone else. The application for unreasonable costs may be useful as I think Thomson must have decided it was better just to not turn up than even try and settle because you don't normally recover costs in the small claims court. They might rethink their position if they keep getting hammered on costs!

Vauban

Great story - well done. How did you justify such a large costs claim? Full of admiration!

lolly2u

Thanks Jamie for reply would you be able to let me know the email address for the legal team &a managing director, tomorrow I will also start pushing CEDR daily, thanks again for your invaluable advice.

alisonmaui

Thank you! I prepared an application setting out the case law that says you can claim £18 a hour as a litigant in person and then filled out a Schedule of Costs that you can get from the court website. I also found some case law in support. Once you record all of your time in preparing your claim, bundle, witness statements and attendance at hearing it soon adds up. The Judge awarded the costs in full,

Justice13075

:beer:Great news. Maybe you could help others by posting how you claimed for being a litigant ,paperwork obviously no names and addresses. I am sure others would be interested in claiming for their time as well

alisonmaui

This was my application (I made sure I made an offer to settle before I issued and made a "without prejudice save as to costs" offer after they had filed their Defence):-


APPLICATION FOR UNREASONABLE COSTS AGAINST THE DEFENDANT


1. The Claimants rely on the Chronology which sets out the Claimants attempts to resolve the matter and the Defendant’s unreasonable conduct.

2. The Defendant did not respond to the Claimants’ claim properly either pre-action, to the Civil Aviation Authority or in the Defence.


3. The majority of the Claimants’ correspondence has been ignored by the Defendant.

4. The Claimants sent a letter before action to the Defendant on 04.05.16. The Defendant did not respond.


5. The Defendant did not respond to the Civil Aviation Authority when the Claimant tried to resolve the matter through the complaints procedure.

6. The Claimants made a without prejudice offer to settle on 03.12.16. The Claimants put the Defendant on notice that they would seek unreasonable costs if the matter proceeded to a hearing. This correspondence was ignored by the Defendant.

7. The Claimants confirmed agreed to the matter being referred to the Small Claims Mediation Service in the Directions Questionnaire and completed the relevant forms. The Defendant did not agree to the matter being referred for mediation.

8. The Claimants rely on 27.14(2)(g) of the Civil Procedure Rules which states that the Court may award:-
“(g) such further costs as the court may assess by the summary procedure and order to be paid by a party who has behaved unreasonably”

9. The Claimants attach a Schedule of Costs.

10. The Claimants rely on The Litigants In Person (Costs and Expenses) Act 1975.

11. The Act gives a Litigant in Person the right to recover “sums in respect of any work done, and any expenses and losses incurred, by the litigant in or in connection with the proceedings to which the order relates”.

12. Paragraph 52.4 of the Costs Practice Direction was amended with effect from 1 October 2011 to increase costs payable from £9.25 per hour to £18.00 per hour.

13. In Mealing-McLeod v The Common Professional Examination Board [2000] EWHC 185 (QB) the court said
“A solicitor’s charging rate includes or takes account of the fact that he has support staff, secretaries, messengers and so forth. A Litigant in Person, for example, must himself post letters, takes files to court and photocopy documents. “The time spent reasonably doing the work…..” mentioned in CPR 48.6(4) permits a reasonable assessment of time spent by the Litigant in Person and should reflect those matters”.

14. In Memon v TNT UK Ltd (2009) Judge Platt sitting at Romford County Court held on appeal that the District Judge was wrong to refuse the Defendant an unreasonable costs order, where the Claimant had attempted to claim 24 days car hire, but where the court subsequently held that there was no need for the Claimant to hire a car at all. The appeal was allowed.

15. In Clohessy v Homes (2003), District Judge Stuart-Brown, sitting in Bristol County Court granted the Defendants an unreasonable costs order, where he it was held that on any objective assessment, the claim was likely to have failed from the outset.

16. The Claimant has made all reasonable attempts to settle this claim and made pre-action and post-action offers to settle. These has been ignored by the Defendants who never provided the Claimants with a substantive reply to the claim.

The Statement of Costs I filled in is here:-
Oops I cannot post a link as a new user but it is Court Form N260

legal_magpie

Sheer brilliance, Alison. I could not have set out the claim better myself

panda_jamie

lolly2u Thomson emails are all @thomson.co.uk Prefixes are customer.legal and david.burling
You can also phone customer services every day. Although it's a call centre they are friendly and they will also send an email to the relevant team so it's just more hassle
Good luck!

David_wrigght

We have been through the whole claims process and the CEDR rule in our favour. They have told us Thomson are legal required to pay us but they can't enforce it. How do we get our money? Any advice would be much appreciated.