Payment for past holiday.

rachell325

Hi, We holidayed in May and paid the balance in full 10 weeks prior in March. We received an invoice stating that the holiday had been paid in full. The holiday company have emailed me this week saying that they have been completing their accounts and admit that they didn't take enough money from our card for our holiday (despite mailing us an invoice stating it was paid in full), and they now want us to contact them to pay the outstanding balance of £88. We have checked our statement and they are correct - they didn't take enough money so what we paid them was short, however this was 8 months ago and we've had confirmation that the amount was paid in full.

Do we have to pay them the £88?

I hope someone can advise.

Many thanks.

DomRavioli

I would suggest seeking proper legal advice, and checking your contract. Most solicitors do a free half an hour, or you could try the CAB (not sure if they do contractual disputes).

silvercar

You do. If paying them in one lump sum causes you hardship, you could negotiate paying over 3 or 4 payments. The bottom line is that you owe the money.

peachyprice

Yes, you do, the invoice was underpaid so you still owe £88, they have 6 years to pursue you for the outstanding amount.

It would be a different scenario entirely if you had paid the full invoice amount but they had invoiced you the wrong amount, in that case you would have a better chance in disputing it.

joerugby

If you had overpaid would you expect them to pay you back?

rachell325

Thank you for the replies.

I was querying primarily because we now have to pay £88 and it was their error. The company didn't take what we expected them to take and what they'd told us that they'd taken. They even sent us an invoice saying that they'd taken the correct amount and that it was paid in full.

It wasn't us who sent the money to them and didn't send enough. We didn't deliberately withhold the money from them.

It was an error on their part, and I wasn't sure if after a certain amount of time they shouldn't expect us to pay due to the reasons given.

Yes, if they had taken too much we would have expected a refund, but that's a different scenario altogether.

Thanks again.

jackieblack

So they took £88 less than you were expecting to be taken?
Didn't you query it at the time?

redcard

These posts are always good for a laugh.

The only thing missing was the bit about the customer service being horrible, the holiday not being what you expected, and you thinking you paid too much anyway and that this £88 was morally yours anyway!

rachell325

We saw the deduction on our statement for the company, glanced over the amount and thought that it was 'about right' (card statements often arrive some weeks after the transaction date) and as we'd had the email saying it had been paid in full we assumed it had been, and that everything was correct. I didn't expect that they'd get it wrong. In many years of booking and paying for holidays it's not happened before.

My post isn't meant to be amusing, it's a reasonable and sensible query to which I'd hoped to receive reasonable and sensible replies. The holiday was fine, they made an error and now we're left with an amount to pay which we weren't expecting. I wouldn't expect a company to under change me for a service, provide that service and then almost 6 months later contact me and say that they hadn't charged me enough, could I now pay the balance.

George_Michael

rachell325 wrote: »

Yes, if they had taken too much we would have expected a refund, but that's a different scenario altogether.

In what way is is totally different?
In both cases there would have been exactly the same error in that a different amount of money to that stated on the invoice had been taken by the company.
As you rightfully would have expected a refund if they had taken too much, so the company rightfully expect you to pay the balance as they took too little.

redcard

rachell325 wrote: »

My post isn't meant to be amusing, it's a reasonable and sensible query to which I'd hoped to receive reasonable and sensible replies. The holiday was fine, they made an error and now we're left with an amount to pay which we weren't expecting. I wouldn't expect a company to under change me for a service, provide that service and then almost 6 months later contact me and say that they hadn't charged me enough, could I now pay the balance.

You got reasonable and sensible replies saying you should pay the balance.

Guess that's not what you wanted.