How do I claim refund from wedding organisers who failed to deliver what we paid for?

jimjams84

Hi,

We got married last month in Corfu, we had paid a company approximately £2000.00, simply to organise the ceremony as we had contacts in Greece so organised transport and reception etc ourselves, there were many faults when we arrived in Corfu, such as 2 days before the wedding we were informed the time of the wedding was 1.30pm rather than the 4pm originally arranged. this meant we had to rearranger all transport, losing our original deposits etc.
we also travelled into Corfu town on the final day of our holiday, costing us 80 euros, to collect our documents which were not available. we were told they would be posted and we would recieve them within 15 days, 35 days later these were still not delivered!
These are just 2 of many problems!!
Please help, not sure where to go with this.
Thanks

sinizterguy

Did you pay with a credit card ? You MAY be able to do a chargeback.

Otherwise, you're not going to get anything back.

UK law is not going to help you for the stuff in Corfu.

jimjams84

Even if the company we used is based in London?
If we chargeback what are the implications?

martindow

European small claims are possible

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/european-union-cross-border-claims

But, 'winning' a case (assuming you did) may be just the start of it. Getting them to pay money may not be easy.

Edit: Just seen that this is a UK company so you could use MCOL, but the comments on getting payment still stand.

sinizterguy

jimjams84 wrote: »

Even if the company we used is based in London?
If we chargeback what are the implications?

Have you got a contract detailing what they promised to deliver ?

Clearly you agreed to the change in time, even if it was at short notice.

If the contract does not specify that they will be liable to other costs due to change it time, what claim do you have ?

lea2012

I get married in Corfu next year, it should have been this year but we had to delay it due to illness.
I used a planner based in Corfu, but did contact several companies before choosing her. ALL the companies I spoke to and emailed were pretty clear in telling us that although we could book a date before we travelled it was not set in stone until we got to Corfu. We were also advised by everyone that the actual time of the wedding would not be confirmed until a couple of days before the day itself.
Most weddings take place in a town hall and they generally only open until mid afternoon anyway so a 4pm wedding sounds a bit unlikely to me.
In terms of your documents, again we were told that these would be posted out to us after the wedding as they need to be stamped / legalised etc. We get married in the south of the island and our town hall will actually give us the paperwork there and then on the day.
I find it hard to believe that you would lose deposits etc on transport, in Corfu nothing is ever planned much and changing a time would have been no big deal. It's also highly unlikely that the transport you had originally selected was booked out for anyone else on the same day so I really don't see that it would have been a big problem.

I'm sorry to hear that your wedding didn't go as you wanted, but having a wedding abroad does come with complications and is just not done to the same strict timetable that we would do in the UK.