Thomsons holiday refund trauma

Gingerroyboy125

We had a holiday booked with Thomsons Travel Agents to Mexico on 18th February 2015, but unfortunately my husband had a heart attack on 28th January. He is still in hospital now - 4th February, awaiting an operation.

We had paid Thomsons £4,731.02. My husband is now not allowed to fly for at least 3 months because it will be dangerous for him. I asked Thomsons if we could transfer this holiday to another one at a later date in the year, but I was informed by them that I could not do this.

Thomsons gave me 2 options - either alter the names on the booking or cancel the holiday. I had no option, but to cancel the holiday, . Thomson said I would only get 10% of the money back which we had paid, plus there would be certain deductions such as card charges (which I didn't understand because we had paid the card charges) and cancellation fees. So we would only get £400 back. This was a major blow, but I had no choice so I went ahead and cancelled.

I finally only received £108 and was told that this was because I had a voucher for £362 (this was received from a complaint we had about a previous holiday) that had to be deducted from the £400 refund we were going to receive.

My argument is - why does this voucher have to be deducted from my 10% refund and not kept by myself for future use on another holiday I may book in the future?

I apologise for the long message, but I didn't want to miss anything out. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you for reading

Alan_Bowen

Firstly, sorry for your troubles, hopefully your insurers will refund the remaining 90% but as you say, you paid the full price and should get back 10% of the full price, not 10% minus the value of a voucher. I would consider that they are in breach of contract in this case, go back and demand the full £400 and if they refuse, complain to ABTA and if necessary use their arbitration scheme, I cannot see any arbitrator not agreeing with you.

PeacefulWaters

Miserable swines.

I'd suggest giving them some polite grief on Twitter.

Hope hubby gets back to normal (did you take out a critical illness policy with a mortgage?) and fingers crossed your insurers pay up in good time.

littlereddevil

Your insurers will give you your money back less whatever excess you chose.

PeacefulWaters

littlereddevil wrote: »

Your insurers will give you your money back less whatever excess you chose.

Insurance policies often have restrictive conditions around reimbursing vouchers.