Groupon Ski deal cancelled

richard84_2

Hi,

I am wondering where i stand with the following situation:

I ordered a 7 nights ski holiday to italy on Groupon for £299 per person. I paid on credit card for 4 people for a total of £1196.00. The hotel asked for my groupon voucher codes and then emailed me back a couple of days later to confirm the reservation was made.

I then went ahead and booked flights with british airways from gatwick to turin flying 25th jan 2014. This was £140.57 per person for a total of £562.28 paid on the same credit card.

On friday the hotel sent me an email to say they would not be opening for the winter and have now gone into administration!

I have spoke to groupon who have issued a full refund for the vouchers £1196.00.
Now i have the problem of the flights - cancelling the flights on BA's website would give me a refund of just £114 out of £562.28.
I don't think i'm covered with travel insurance either as my bank account (santander) discontinued that benefit earlier in the year... i will now have to dig through letters from earlier trips in the year to see if i took out year long cover (though i think i usually only buy single trip).

Is there anything i can do to get the money back on the flights?? I'm so annoyed that the hotel were not upfront and honest about their situation from the start.

Any advice would be appreciated, though i fear i don't have much of a leg to stand on.

Thanks

Richard

ThumbRemote

Short answer: no.

This is exactly what travel insurance is for. Your only other option is to keep the flights and search for another hotel.

unholyangel

Unfortunately as above, this is one of the pitfalls of booking holiday elements separately without travel insurance in place.

The only other thing I can possibly suggest is seeing if perhaps you're covered by section 75 if you paid by credit card - however they may refuse if there is not a direct link of lender > borrower > supplier (this can happen when paying via paypal for example as then the link required for section 75 is broken).

Was your contract with groupon or the hotel?

What about looking at both hotels and villas/apartments as thumbremote suggests? May come in around the same price or may be a more expensive. But if theres not much difference, perhaps the better option rather than not going at all?

richard84_2

thanks for the replies

well i did have travel insurance, but they wouldn't let me claim for the flights until the flight itself was cancelled. fair enough i suppose.

Anyway, i've now got an apartment booked so we will keep the flights.

does anyone have any recommendations for cheap deals on transfers, lift passes and ski hire in sauze d'oulx??!!!