Travel agent didn't inform me of extra fees but refuse to reimburse

qy206

Made a hotel booking in Fiji through a luxury travel agent (shall remain unnamed for now). Paid deposit to agent but ended up finding an extra charge on my credit card bill from the hotel in FJD for almost twice the amount of the deposit including the added foreign currency charges applied by Amex. Travel agent admitted their mistake in not telling me about further deposits required and reimbursed me for the foreign currency charge and poor FX rate.

I accepted this but queried an extra 2.5% charge that the hotel had applied (this is an expensive hotel so 2.5% isn't a small amount!) as I had also not been informed of this. This led to a whole palava ultimately ending up with the travel agent re-listening to the calls I had when I made my payments. This is where things take a turn for the worse.

My travel agent then informs me that as I had made a call to them 12 hours prior to the call when I had made the payment where I was read out the long list of ts&cs, that this meant I shouldn't have been reimbursed for any of the charges. However, they would let me keep the refund as a sign of goodwill but wouldn't be refunding me for the 2.5% fee.

I don't understand how telling me of the ts&cs on a call 18 hours prior would absolve them of their responsibility to inform me of further fees at the time of payment! I've tried escalating to the highest possible level but to no avail. Is there anything else I can do?

:mad::mad:

Voyager2002

Did the long list of T & Cs include details of the charges? If so you don't have a leg to stand on.

agrinnall

More importantly, did they at any point provide you with the T&Cs in a durable form (for example, in an email)? If they didn't then you stand a much better chance of disputing fees that were not advised at the time of payment.

qy206

Yes it did but the didn't tell me them on the call where I made the payment. They told me on a separate call 18 hours later!

qy206

agrinnall wrote: »

More importantly, did they at any point provide you with the T&Cs in a durable form (for example, in an email)? If they didn't then you stand a much better chance of disputing fees that were not advised at the time of payment.

No they didn't. No written T&Cs and no T&Cs read out to me on the call where I actually made the transaction. Surely they should be telling me the T&Cs when I'm actually about to pay?