Lowcostholidays collapses – your rights as 140,000 hit by travel chaos

leylandsunaddict

gardner1 wrote: »

well £744 is about 885 euros that's all I would pay them on last day

That was the price paid to LCH (incl their commission). That contract doesn't exist anymore, and hoteliers don't have to honour the cheap rates that LCH paid (or rather didn't pay) to the hotel.

balletshoes

Paul23n wrote: »

I Am presently on holiday in Crete, I booked with lch and arrived on Thursday 14th July. I presented my hotel voucher at check in, but now 2 days later the hotel is demanding I pay them 1360 euros as they have not been paid by lch, Which is more than than the £744 I originally paid to lch, the hotel say if they give me a receipt I will be able to claim the full amount back from lch insurers, I have not yet paid them any money, what should I do. Flights all okay as booked separately.

your hotel is under no obligation to charge you only £744, that was LCH's rate. I would try to negotiate with the manager, you will have to pay the hotel but if you try to negotiate (ie don't go in all guns blazing) they may be able to give you a discount rate.

Ainsley1

Paul, there is a similar situation all over with tourists in resort where hotels have not been paid by lch. Indeed some (maybe many) have not had payments yet for completed stays this year so they are taking big hits, some are family businesses that can I'll afford any losses so please understand their position too. My current studio owner is instantly many thousands of euros lost.
Lch 'negotiated' very low rates with no upfront payment. My experience is showing about one third only of what they charge was contracted to be paid to accommodation providers -if at all in the circumstances.
The hotels will wish to understandably charge their usual going rate, in Crete that should be displayed in your room? As said you may be able to negotiate or move elsewhere.

Unfortunately the situation is the result of working practice and no ATOL protection for you. The others have been outlined already.

I fortunately have an ATOL cert from my travel agent (not low cost group) but my studio owner has still not been paid as it was lch that contracted with them. I have witnessed many tears and feel embarrassed that a former UK company can treat contractors so poorly and others sdvice trying to cheat them out of perfectly reasonable charges, however hard it may be hitting us tourists who perhaps also can I'll afford to pay more plus in some cases may get no recompense.

Alan_Bowen

Ainsley1, I hope you have been in touch with your travel agent who did issue you an ATOL Certificate, it is their legal responsibility to pay for the accommodation. If they refuse contact the CAA on the telephone number on the Certificate

deeboy1

Paul23n wrote: »

the hotel say if they give me a receipt I will be able to claim the full amount back from lch insurers

Just be very careful about making any assumptions that travel insurance will pay out. Most insurance policies (mine with Nationwide included) sadly EXCLUDE travel agent/ intermediary failure. The hotel is very unlikely to know what insurance policy or terms you or anyone else in the chain have in place so check your own policy carefully and in the meantime when making any decisions about additional payments just don't assume that you will get a payout.

deeboy1

I have just come off the phone with AMEX and thought it might be helpful for someone to post my experience.

I called and explained it was a lowcostholidays group issue and that I wished to make a section 75 claim on my AMEX Nectar card.

In my case it concerns almost £700 of accommodation costs purchased from hoteling.com in April for travel in January 2017.

He asked me for the transaction date and amount which I had located on my statement before calling. He also asked me for my booking reference number from the confirmation email from hoteling, which I gave him. That was all he needed.

The customer service agent told me that they would raise a dispute with the supplier rather than make a section 75 claim. This threw me so I questioned it and insisted I would like to make a section 75 claim also, so he checked with his manager. He came back and said it was not possible to make a section 75 claim at present.

He confirmed they were applying the same procedure to all lowcost claims; that the transaction was definitely eligible for the dispute procedure they were following and I would receive my money back. He said they had been dealing with a number of these transactions today and they knew what they were doing and was confident the matter would be settled within 30 days.

I don't know how much faith to put in all of this, but he was certainly very helpful, and it seems their team has been dealing with a number of these issues this weekend, and he was sure I would get my money back.

I guess we'll see. If I'm honest, I wasn't expecting much because it's dubious at best that this type of travel agent/ intermediary claim would ever be covered by section 75, and the mention of a different procedure threw me. Fingers crossed...

JJB1979

gardner1 wrote: »

well £744 is about 885 euros that's all I would pay them on last day

That would be unfair to the hotel and running out on the bill.

The agreed price to the hotel would be in Euros and so the agreed price with LCH than the £744. So if the holiday was booked in November (like mine was) then the agreed price was more like 1,060 euros, or £890 today.

The minimum I expect to lose on this is £350, that will only if the hotel honours the original agreement (which they don;t have to) and will be due to currency changes since booking.

Mathev

Hi. We booked with lowcostholidays a few months back for a hotel end of September. Yesterday I contacted the Hotel and asked if the booking is still valid and has been fully paid. They confirmed this over the telephone telling me that it was prepaid and all we needed to do was pay room tax on arrival.

They confirmed this via email. After looking at the low-cost holidays website statement I am just querying whether they can still cancel the booking despite theHotel saying that it has been prepaid? Any informed advice will be welcomed. We are insured but paid fof our hotel with debit card. I don't want to take any action before encountering any problems. I am hoping that because our room has already been paid for,that the booking will remain valid.

redmalc

Mathev

I think you are one of the lucky ones,given you have the e mail it should all be ok

Alleycat

We booked in June to stay at Aquis Sandy Beach resort in Corfu.

Have contacted both Thomas Cook and Easyjet and flights are all ok.

Will rebook hotel transfer with Hoppa and using their 25% off code (got the email re 30% off but wanted to confirm other details first) will save just under £11.

Have contacted the hotel and they still have our booking and will only charge the amount that they would have received from Lowcostholidays. So even with the change in exchange rate we are saving around £395.

Barclaycard will raise a dispute and say we will get our money back.

We really are very thankful that our summer holiday has been salvaged.