Emirates Holidays refund / cancellation

Natned

This may be a bit long so please bear with me. 

In September we booked a holiday with Emirates Holidays to Maldives departing from Glasgow on 2 June. With everything going on we though we just wait and see how the situation develops and if needs to be amended will take it from there. Paid off the holiday in full and decided not to worry about it. On Monday I noticed on the Emirates app that our return Male - Dubai connection has been suspended and we need to contact them. Tried to phone and gave up after an hour on hold. Thought there is still time as we have 2 months until departure. On Tuesday the resort we were going to officially announced they are closing until the end of June. Again thought perhaps they will offer us another place provided travel bans are lifted etc. 

Today decided to try and call them again, in the off chance I actually do get through, and discuss options. Much to my surprise in 10 min someone picked up the line. The person could not be more helpful on the phone, mind you he was not aware either one of our connections was suspended nor that the resort is officially closing doors for a while. Looked at possible options to rebook for different months later this year and early next, nothing was suitable as prices were pretty much double. At no point he pushed us to agree to credit note which was also an option for us failing anything else, in fact we hardly discussed this as a resolution. He then offered a full refund which is obviously the ideal situation for us. Reassured us that is will be clear with the follow up e-mail we did not cancel and we will receive a full refund. 

Couple of hours later I noticed that our return flight from Dubai to Glasgow is also cancelled in full. Some time  later received an e-mail which reads in highlighted: We are very sorry that it has been deemed necessary to cancel your holiday with us on this occasion. Please find attached your cancellation invoice, including any outstanding payment details. If there are any refunds due to you these will be credited to your account in a minimum of 4 weeks. Thank you once again for your original booking with Emirates Holidays and we would be delighted to assist you with any future travel arrangements. 

The attached cancellation notice reads Further to your cancellation request, this document is your cancellation invoice: and breakdown with refund at £0 and the cancellation charges are to the full amount of the holidays. We agreed clearly on the phone that is basically the only option as they are not able to offer any alternative, but even if we did cancel the holidays at this point the cancellation charge should only be 30% of the total cost. So, neither really make sense and I am totally fricking out we will not see a penny back. Our booking is no longer available on their website when we log and all the flights have now disappeared from the app. I now fear when eventually get to speak to them again they will say they have no record of our booking. 

I've send them an e-mail explaining the above and will try and contact them again tomorrow when the lines are open. 

Our insurance does not cover corona or such cancellations, even though it was taken out before the pandemic. I have checked with them last week. To make things more complicated about 60% were paid from my husband debit card and the remaining balance from my credit card which is not a joint credit card. As if that wasn't enough on the original booking he was the lead passenger, on the flights it was me even though it was a package holiday. Does section 75 apply? I read all this horrific reviews about how Emirates are handling the situation and thought after the call today it did sound too good to be true. Fair enough the e-mail followed. 
Any word of wisdom will be greatly appreciated as I am really loosing my mind on this. Thank you in advance! 

Westin

Without paragraphs that was a difficult read and quite hard to follow.

The one question I found I think I can answer. IMO there is no S75 claim.

I suspect what may have happened is that from their end the cancellation was either incorrectly processed by someone or is just how their system processes cancellations in the first instance before a correction made to apply a refund payment or a credit to the booking.  I expect many travel businesses are currently using staff from other parts of businesses who are not fully au fait with systems or companies having to adapt and intervene with a manual intervention afterwards (applying a full refund to a booking which would not normally qualify for one) to a normal system set automated one.

Only Emirates Holidays/Dnata can tell you for sure.

[edit 29March - thank you for editing and adding paragraphs]

ravravrav

We also booked via EmiratesHolidays but going in 2nd week of April. Emirates have cancelled the flight and FCO travel advice prevents us from going. We have been offered a credit note but who knows when things will get back to normal so I've requested a full refund. No response back as of yet.

DJSINGH

Keen eye on this thread. My flight has been cancelled for 11 April and have not taken action yet. My options are phone for a refund or section 75 (via Tesco CC). Guess it will be the latter judging by the comments here..

booboo73_2

Just got my refund from emirates holidays today. They have held back £202, not happy, I thought there were no refund penalty charges due to COVID-19?