Section 75 Help Third party issue?

Ben8282

Unfortunately, the OP's failure to come back to say exactly what they purchased through this company makes it difficult to comment.
However, unless air travel was involved there would be no ATOL requirement.
With regard to ABTA, this is a trade association and there is no legal requirement for a travel agent to be a member. The comment about the size of the company is not relevant. There has been much mention of 'insurance' but what insurance? There is no legal requirement for individuals operating as travel agents to have any insurance of any sort (except where air travel is involved and there is an ATOL requirement).
This was a scam like any other scam and should be treated as such without the inclusion of red herrings such as ABTA and insurance..

It is no longer possible to see the website of this company so I can't determine what they were or were not claiming.

chattychappy

born_again wrote: »

If you cancel the contract, then no matter what it is YOU breaking the contract as far as any card provider is concerned.
Just who (full description) has debited the card?

No matter what, the law applies. S75 refers to joint liability in the event of "any claim against the supplier in respect of a misrepresentation...". Rescission is a remedy available in certain misrepresentation cases - and the CC would be jointly liable for this.

You are not "breaking the contract" by exercising rescission, which is the legal term for cancelling in these cases. Whether there is indeed a misrepresentation and rescission is available, is another matter.

summersmum82

apologies for late response, for some reason I kept getting 'the admin has blocked your IP address'


So, I booked a holiday to Disney with a company called Go West With Mickey, they had a web page and a facebook page and lots of positive reviews.
I emailed them and paid deposit on CC. this was paid to 'Disney best Deals'
a customer then turned up to no holiday booking and things started coming out of the woodwork about this company. They weren't insured as a business by Towergate as they state in T&C's and Disney did not work with them, they were basically booking up as a customer last minute deals.
Before all the issues they did a special deal on their FB page for getting to 9k likes and offered a freebie if you paid so much off your holiday via bank transfer (yes yes I know...very stupid but we all fell for it) this was paid into an account called MDG services which turns out to be the husband of the woman who runs this 'company'.
more and more issues came to light, they tried to say it was the work of an ex employee but more people were turning up to no booking.
Now they have completely closed up shop, taken down the website, the FB page and are completely uncontactable.
when I explained this to my credit card they still refuse to do a section 75 saying its a 3rd party company and they haven't yet failed to provide me with my holiday.
hope this answers questions. no flight was booked. just hotel/tickets/character dining.

born_again

chattychappy wrote: »

No matter what, the law applies. S75 refers to joint liability in the event of "any claim against the supplier in respect of a misrepresentation...". Rescission is a remedy available in certain misrepresentation cases - and the CC would be jointly liable for this.

You are not "breaking the contract" by exercising rescission, which is the legal term for cancelling in these cases. Whether there is indeed a misrepresentation and rescission is available, is another matter.

If the debit name on the card is not the company providing the service then there is no creditor debtor link. Hence why payments via paypal etc fail under S75.

This is how it is dealt with. Legal teams will argue that if you break the contract by cancelling the service. Then as such there is NO S75 case.

OP's only option is non receipt of service chargeback.

This is where people need to talk to the team that deal with disputes, explain the situation and what is the best way forward. Rather than going straight in claiming under S75.

Also given it appears that the owners of the company are known and they have done a runner. Then the financial crimes unit of the police need to be involved.

Caz3121

according to facebook posts
"GO WEST WITH MICKEY COMPANY HAVE BEEN SELLING DISNEYLAND PACKAGE HOLIDAYS UNDER THE TERMS THAT THEY ARE TRAVEL AGENTS.

At this time we know of £300k worth of customer bookings where the customer does not have a Disney Booking reference.

Action Fraud is currently investigating."

may be worth joining the group and see if there is any info to help with your card company

Terry_Towelling

born_again wrote: »

If the debit name on the card is not the company providing the service then there is no creditor debtor link. Hence why payments via paypal etc fail under S75.

This is how it is dealt with. Legal teams will argue that if you break the contract by cancelling the service. Then as such there is NO S75 case.

OP's only option is non receipt of service chargeback.

I think this far too simplistic a test to apply to assessing whether there is a S75 liability. If I part pay a travel agent by credit card and their name appears on my statement and they fail to book anything for me with any end suppliers, then they are in breach of contract with me and a claim under S75 against them and/or the card issuer should stand. If bookings were made by the agent and the end suppliers failed to perform, then I would agree with you.

You can't really compare the situation with the PayPal type scenario because the PayPal-type role in the overall chain isn't being called into question. They perform their part of the contract by transferring the funds on and so any default by the end supplier is not within the DCS chain.

GWWM is the end of the chain and the end supplier. You were contracting with them and them alone and they failed to perform their part of the contract.

Just my opinion.

Ben8282

Could this simply not be charged back as 'goods/services paid for not received/provided' without recourse to section 75.
It appears a clear case of having paid for something and not having received it.

Terry_Towelling

Ben8282 wrote: »

Could this simply not be charged back as 'goods/services paid for not received/provided' without recourse to section 75.
It appears a clear case of having paid for something and not having received it.

Yes, that is an option for any card based payments - subject to time limits and the like - but in this case only part of the total was paid by card and the rest was paid by bank transfer, hence the desire to exploit S75 to get the full purchase cost paid back.

It should also be remembered that it is the customer's choice to pursue a claim under S75. What the bank then does with the debt (if it pays out the claim) may indeed be to raise a Chargeback to recover some of the loss. My view on Chargebacks is that they should be 'invisible' to cardholders; the cardholder should simply raise a dispute and the issuer should then just handle it in line with whatever tools they have available and pay out the customer as applicable.

My worry is that unscrupulous issuers may steer cardholders towards the Chargeback route and thereby deprive them of any additional rights that might be bestowed by S75 - such as consequential losses, and claiming payments not made by credit card.

summersmum82

Ben8282 wrote: »

Could this simply not be charged back as 'goods/services paid for not received/provided' without recourse to section 75.
It appears a clear case of having paid for something and not having received it.

The CC company are telling me exactly this but I could not claim until next year when the booking failed to materialise however I don't know where I would stand with this as I have only part paid the holiday with no way of contacting the company.


I am having issues talking through the options with my CC as there is a language barrier so struggling to get my point/issues across

chattychappy

born_again wrote: »

This is how it is dealt with. Legal teams will argue that if you break the contract by cancelling the service. Then as such there is NO S75 case.

I'm sure credit card "legal teams" may indeed try that argument!

But the law remains - S75 separately identifies misrepresentation as a claim for which there is joint liability - and that is why people have recourse to the FOS or courts where it will be "dealt with" properly.

(All this is subject to the other provisos - main cardholder performed transaction, "chain" not broken etc)