Real-life MMD: Should we keep quiet about 'free' holiday?

meknowalot-51

When you return in october only then can you say it's a free holiday.Personally i wouldn't be able to enjoy my time away as it's theft,knowingly taking something without paying for it.Clearly someone at the travel company has made an admin error and got the payment from somewhere.Somebody's account has been overcharged which will lead to an investigation,finally ending with your holiday.Get in contact with them again and ask that they sort it out explaining everything.On the other hand if your genuinely not going to lose any sleep over it,carry on and do nothing.Just think,that in november the travel company realise the mistake and legally take the money that is there's,nice xmas.You should get it sorted and enjoy your holiday.

fubar74

If the money has been taken from someone elses account what if they are fighting to clear it up or have been put into debt for it? they will come back to you eventually so might as well make it clear to them you haven't paid and they have made an error. I couldn't live with believing that someone else has paid for my holiday and is possibly suffering for it.

John_Pierpoint

I would be seriously worried that a company that cannot get something as simple as collecting the money correct, has any chance of not messing up somewhere else on the holiday. For that reason I would try to find out where the inefficiency had occurred.

However I feel no moral obligation to try to manage someone else's business from the bottom up.
I am probably paying over the odds for a supposedly professional organisation to organise a holiday for me. From experience a DIY holiday of buying a cheap airline ticket and going "on spec", works out a whole lot cheaper and can be more fun.
In the old days one had to chat up the taxi drivers (or a tourist information office) on arrival, now we have the internet as well (though there are nasty fraudsters lurking on the interweb). The real fly in the ointment with the DIY approach is my lack of foreign language ability. [8 months - 8 years us the best time for learning languages].

Commercially most organisations will pay against invoice - you think I owe you some money, if I agree I will pay you.
Some take the really arrogant attitude of Our records are better than yours, don't bother to waste our time with your paperwork, we will pay you what we think we owe, (eventually) If you don't like it you can take us to court and/or manage without our business.

I would normally just make sure the money was waiting for the time that the inefficient organisation managed to get its act together.

chudies

Company's problem. Just ensure your bank account has sufficient funds, and enjoy your hols.

blainestewart

I would take it and leave the money in there in case! Do you think they would go out of their way to tell you if you had paid for their insurance when you didnt ask for it (for example)? Doubt it.

Get on that bird in the sky and dont worry about it.

exclamation11

I had a similar scenario a couple of years ago. Ordered three pairs of shoes from a fairly well-known retailer online, and was sent an email a few days later saying that one pair was out of stock, that that particular order/amount (the one pair) had been cancelled and my card had not been charged for that pair.

I was a bit confused as they had actually been delivered and my parents' cat had settled herself into the empty box (I have size 8 feet, so frankly, she had a lot of room). In spite of friends telling me not to bother, I emailed the company stating they had in fact delivered them. The company told me no, that I must have been mistaken.

This went back and forth for about 4 exchanges, including escalation to a manager (after the initial rep was quite snippy, rude, and a teeny bit insulting). Finally they curtly agreed to charge me for it. I then wrote an email expressing my satisfaction that the matter had been resolved, but noted their poor handling of the situation.

After this, an even higher-up manager called and emailed me to tell me to apologize and to keep the boots as a goodwill gesture.

tl;dr version: Tell the travel co. and/or your bank!