Error on lastminute.com gave us the wrong property

peachyprice

OP, you'd stand more chance if you'd have refused the 'wrong' accommodation. As it is, you stayed there the 4 days, you had use of it, the fact that you spent all that time trying to sort out what had gone wrong instead of enjoying your holiday was purely your choice. You could have accepted a mistake had been made, enjoyed your holiday then sorted it when you got back, you chose not to.

MCOL will expect you to give details of actual loss, i.e the difference in price between what you paid for and what you received, which you yourself admit there was no difference, you got what you paid for. You could claim for your phone calls and any data used is sorting out what had happened, you could claim for any additional expenses incurred due to the location of the 'wrong' property. But that's about it. How much do you think that's worth?

DoaM

Unless things have changed recently ... "loss of enjoyment" IS something you can claim for. How you quantify it and make a claim for it is another matter.

peachyprice

DoaM wrote: »

Unless things have changed recently ... "loss of enjoyment" IS something you can claim for. How you quantify it and make a claim for it is another matter.

And going by past cases, that's usually around 10% of the holiday cost, so £30.

I guess OP could push for a cash refund instead of vouchers, that would seem fair.

lincroft1710

ScribblyGum wrote: »

the impact on the enjoyment of the holiday was a big part of it to be honest, because we'd picked an apartment we would have enjoyed spending time in for my GF's birthday, whereas we had to treat it as just a place where we slept in the end.

Understand the initial disappointment, but was the apartment so bad you couldn't spend time in it. Personally if I was visiting Paris I would want to be out enjoying the city, with perhaps no more than half a day spent in the apartment

Not to mention the time wasted fault-finding and initial tensions with the owner.

Your choice to spend the time thus

Also, I agree that it was a mistake rather than an attempt to mislead, but it was a fault that was difficult to diagnose and recreate so it would still be on their site today if I had not taken the time to pin-point it. So we've suffered the consequences of their mistake, then spent time identifying it and getting them to fix it and a 10% voucher in return (to use on a website I've lost confidence in) seems like a "token gesture" as @unholyangel says, rather than an acknowledgement of fault or appreciation of us as customers. I suppose I'm just surprised and disappointed, I have used them for years and thought they were better than this.

Bearing in mind the nature and business methods of the company, their response is what I would have expected, not always wholly satisfactory, but they do acknowledge their mistake


@unholyangel, I genuinely expected a refund or a large percentage of it, purely out of professional embarrassment if nothing else. I work in website development and to have a customer point out a fault like this would be really helpful and embarrassing, so my response would be apologetic and generous to win their confidence back :-)

I would doubt if the term "professional embarrassment" is in many such companies' dictionaries. Had you refused the accommodation there may have been grounds for a full or substantial refund, but you accepted it and stayed for the period you booked, why should they refund you?

We'd seen the MCOL and had initially thought we'd have to pay their costs if we lost, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The fees for under £300 seem reasonable so that's becoming an attractive option...

Do bear in mind that going down the MCOL line can be time consuming and stressful. There is a possibility that on receipt of a Letter Before Action the company may increase its offer or they may just reply "See you in court". Some companies also ask for adjournments, so that's more time you have to spend and you can't claim for time spent in bringing your case

Thanks again.

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ThumbRemote

peachyprice wrote: »

OP, you'd stand more chance if you'd have refused the 'wrong' accommodation. As it is, you stayed there the 4 days, you had use of it, the fact that you spent all that time trying to sort out what had gone wrong instead of enjoying your holiday was purely your choice. You could have accepted a mistake had been made, enjoyed your holiday then sorted it when you got back, you chose not to.

You think it's straightforward to refuse accommodation in a foreign city and attempt to find somewhere else suitable at immediate notice? If they'd done this, you'd have posted saying how it was all their own fault for refusing the accommodation and not trying to resolve things there and then.

If they'd accepted it at the time and attempted to sort it when they got back, you'd have posted saying that because they didn't try to resolve it at the time, nothing could be done.

No matter what happens, you'll just try to blame it on the consumer.

peachyprice

ThumbRemote wrote: »

You think it's straightforward to refuse accommodation in a foreign city and attempt to find somewhere else suitable at immediate notice?

In Paris, yes!!!!

If they'd done this, you'd have posted saying how it was all their own fault for refusing the accommodation and not trying to resolve things there and then.

If they'd accepted it at the time and attempted to sort it when they got back, you'd have posted saying that because they didn't try to resolve it at the time, nothing could be done.

No matter what happens, you'll just try to blame it on the consumer.

Please, don't tell me what I would have said. You don't know me.

ScribblyGum

It's facinating to hear how other people might spend time in Paris but it's not relevant to why we were there and having our itinerary critiqued wasn't the purpose of my post

As mentioned, we raised this immediately with the owner over email (they weren't there in person) as our initial guess was that they'd switched us for availability reasons etc. Locking the keys back in and wandering off to pay for some near by hotel accommodation didn't seem reasonable at the time and still doesn't now.

As for lastminute's response, the owner contacted them several times only to be bounced to booking.com, I logged a formal complaint with clear instructions on how to review the problem and they phoned me to insist they only listed booking.com's details and I should complain to them. Eventually after much resistance they said they'd check with their web team, clearly only in an effort to placate me, they then admitted the mistake the following day. So it obviously didn't take long to check and they'd spent longer talking to us trying to pass the blame.

It seems avenues for chasing them are limited but there are some. MCOL is an option we're willing to take and we're still in touch with the owner who is understandably annoyed at having her properties listed incorrectly. Her complaint is still ongoing, but it doesn't seem that lastminute had yet admitted fault or informed her it had been fixed, so we've at least updated her and she's kindly said that she's raising the issue of compensation because she agrees that the offer is unacceptable.

Thanks for all the (on topic) responses.