Cancelled flight - travel agent charges

dctrgre

Hi all, long time lurker first time poster. I suspect that I am on a hiding to nothing here but would be grateful for any advice.

I booked some flights through a small travel agent/broker. I paid by credit card, the agent uses Sage Pay as the online payment provider.

The airline subsequently cancelled the flights, and so I am eligible for a refund. The travel agent is happy to make the refund, but are withholding just over £100 of the amount I originally paid.

- c.£50 as an admin fee. This is laid out in their (badly worded imho) t&c's, so although it seems unfair I can't really complain.
- c.£50 which they say "belongs to the bank as payment was made via credit card". This seems incorrect, as I would expect the bank/provider to refund their fees to the retailer when a refund is made.

I would welcome opinions on where I can go from here. Do I stand any chance of getting back anything further from the travel agent? Would a complaint to my credit card provider help? Could travel insurance cover this?

AlSto

In a similar situation, I gave the airline an opportunity to re-route me. I wanted to avoid the route of refund since I obtained the flight at a low price and rebooking would have cost a lot more.
The re-route was on a more convenient route anyway.

lea2012

I would suggest contacting your credit card company to check. I'm pretty sure if the airline have refunded them in full they have no legal right to gain from it, especially if it wasn't your fault.

mattyprice4004

They can cover their reasonable costs though, so the admin fee will probably stand.

Alan_Bowen

Charges normally arise when you cancel, not when the airline does. Is this a long haul route as if it is the agent normally acts as an agent for the airline and should be offering a full refund. Identify the airline, route and agent and we may be able to offer more advice

dctrgre

Thanks for your replies so far. The route was London-St Maarten, via AMS on the way out and CDG on the way back, booked & travelling out with KLM but coming back on a codeshare with Air France.

Probably at least partly as a result of the recent hurricane, KLM are reducing their weekly flights to SXM from four to two. They cancelled our outbound journey and put us on a flight leaving London 3 days earlier, that require an overnight stay in AMS. Different flight numbers, which I understand works in our favour.

The agent is Moresand Ltd, T/A World Airfares.

Alan_Bowen

Moresand is not a small business, it is £100 million a year business whose call centre is not UK based. Booking conditions normally mention charges for you to cancel, not if the airline cancels the flight, but if they do have such a charge, you are stuck with it. The bank charge is a complete nonsense, if they refuse to give you the extra £50, I would contact your card issuer and request a chargeback. Bank fees are a cost of doing business, presumably they charged you a 2% fee in the first place and from January 2018, fees for paying by credit or debit cards will be outlawed completely