Love holidays

jojo5678

I can't help in any way but I am in a similar situation with loveholidays.  I only booked and paid deposit on 11th March for travel to Dubai on 19th May!  Remainder of deposit due 21st April and balance due to be paid by 5th May.  I can't see the point in paying any more money as I already know Emirates have cancelled all flights to travellers until July so.  I'm not sure If I will lose my deposit of £176 but I would rather lose that than lose £1500.  I can't see the point in paying any more money knowing full well my holiday will not go ahead?

cslambert84

Thanks Jojo5678. Its so unfair to lose so much money when its not our fault. I am worried that I will lose £769 that Ive paid towards it already and I cant even contact them to find out what is going on. I hope Martin Lewis has some advice for us because love holidays are not being helpful at all!

Westin

cslambert84 said:

Thanks Jojo5678. Its so unfair to lose so much money when its not our fault. I am worried that I will lose £769 that Ive paid towards it already and I cant even contact them to find out what is going on. I hope Martin Lewis has some advice for us because love holidays are not being helpful at all!

He does and has done for some time.

Have you read the MSE article titled “Coronavirus Travel Rights”?  Link in purple box above. Section in there about the situation on part paid holidays.

jodie19890101

Good afternoon, can anyone advise. I have sent this to Loveholidays and they are refusing to give refund or credit note.
I am writing to begin the process of claiming a refund for the dreadful experience we have endured this week in Morocco.
As much as I can appreciate it is a global crisis of the COVID-19 then I think as a booking agent you need to take responsibility
First I would like to express my anger over the extremely poor communication I received from Love holidays and Ryanair. It was a shock to have received this especially only arriving to the destination the day before. Surely taking such drastic measures should have been known prior to the start of the holiday. In this day and age I feel a text message is not appropriate form of communication to tell passengers the sudden urge to evacuate a country. With no follow up structure in order to do so in a logical or systematic approach. To go to an airport of complete carnage every consecutive day for hours and hours to try and get lucky to get a flight was not how I anticipated my holiday to go. We couldnt get through to Ryanair. Again poor communication from them as well. Similar to yourselves they also feel one text message is appropriate to tell you the return flight has cancelled and to check your emails which took hours to then come through in the inbox. When I logged onto the Ryanair account, it showed the flight was cancelled and I was given two options. 1) to get a refund. 2) reschedule a flight.
Arguement in this instance was I didnt want a refund to then have no airline to have responsibility for us and especially where other airlines were trebleing air fares. I was not in a financial position to do this.
There was no available flights showing with Ryanair. When I checked other airlines to attempt to transfer the bookings then there was no UK flights.
As you will be able to see I came to Loveholidays on Wedneday in a state of panic as not only could we not get an available flight, but the manager of the hotel told us it was closing Friday morning. When I went on your website to see if there was any information, there was a section at the top of the screen advising not to contact if we are not due to travel within 7 days. If I wasnt going to be without accommodation by the Friday then I would have waited as per the information. So again this was misleading.I waited over an hour to get through to an agent called Scott who was very unhelpful. I was basically told Loveholidays couldnt assist, kept telling me to contact the airline and get a flight ASAP which seemed to be impossible. The other option I was given was to go to the embassy which was closed. After being unsuccessful with Loveholidays I waited on a online chat to Ryanair for two hours and didnt get through to an agent. Then the online chat closed.
Later that evening just before midnight available flights suddenly appeared on the Ryanair website. I immediately booked a flight for the following day at 1940 from RAK - STN 19/03/2020. I got both myself and my partners boarding passes printed. Please note we booked the evening flight in the hope the chaos at the airport would have eased slightly.
With it In light of the COVID-19 and the government telling people to stay safe and not be in mass gatherings, it made absolutely no sense at all for thousands and thousands of potentially infected people to be stuck In an airport.
We were unable to contact our private airport transfer to arrange for the new flight so this meant we had to pay 400 DHMS to get to the airport. Taxis had increased the fares since the need of services.
Whilst my partner went for breakfast the hotel was going to be closing with immediate effect and not staying open until the friday as we was told the day prior. So we quickly had to pack and leave and go to the airport. We was at the airport by 1100 with many hours pending prior to our flight.
After spending almost 12 hours at the airport going through the teadeaous process we got as far as the boarding gate to what was already a delayed flight to be involuntary denied boarding as they overbooked the flight by 41 passengers. As you can tell we was far from impressed. We had allocated seats assigned on our boarding passes and still denied. 4 hours later after a lot more waiting, we had to go back through security, passport control and collect our luggage. We arrived at a hotel that was arranged by the airport around 2330. The next flight we was given was Friday 20th at 1830 and after everything I was feeling less then optimistic whether we would get that flight.
The transfer picked us up from the hotel at 1300 in preparation to get the 1830 flight. So yet another day at the airport. Thankfully after another long day we was allowed on this flight and made it back to the UK.
What should have been a relaxing two week holiday turned into a holiday nightmare. The time we spent in Morocco was either at the hotel as a base for food and back to sleep for the night or we was at the airport trying to get a flight home.
The hotel overall was clean and adequate. However the food served was repetitive and the standard was becoming worse each day. They turned off electric and staff were unhelpful to our needs. Please also note we had to payment the hotel two weeks of government tax on arrival. The have not been refunded the difference from the time we are not going to be staying there.
Referring back to the poor communication methods then at some point during this disaster, a representative from Love holidays or Ryanair should have come to the hotel to advise of the process of what to do. We was obtaining a lot of information from other guests staying at the hotel and days spent at the airport. A lot of stress and the unknowing could have been reduced by getting accurate information from a rep as reliable. 
Can anyone help as I think its appalling they expect me to walk away from a £1300 paid holiday just to say thank you for the feedback.  

Westin

Quite a difficult read without paragraphs.

Neither RyanAir or Love Holidays would have resort representatives to come to the hotel as you suggest. 

It was a fast changing situation and the Moroccan authorities introducing lock-downs and travel restrictions very quickly.  Many have sadly reported chaotic scenes at Marrakesh airport (not sure about Agadir) with people attempting to return back to their own countries.  I really don't think LoveHolidays can be blamed for this and I also suspect RyanAir were doing what they could to operate rescue type flights. 

Do you have travel insurance that covers for Curtailment or Travel Disruption? 

bagand96

Unfortunately I think you are expecting Love Holidays to have acted like a tour operator.  They are not a Tour Operator, they are just a travel agent, all they do is book your hotel with the provider and book your flights with the airline.  By booking together with them you do get certain protections under the Package and Linked Travel Arrangements 2018, but still they aren't a tour operator, they don't have in resort reps (like TUI/Jet2 etc), and it's unlikely that Love Holidays actually had any responsibility for you.

You might be able to claim under your travel insurance for curtailment or abandonment.  Some policies cover it, some don't, some will exclude Pandemics etc, it will just depend what policy you have.

EU261 provides compensation for denied boarding, but I expect Ryanair will claim exceptional circumstances, so the compensation probably won't be due.  It seems they did provide you with overnight accommodation etc before your replacement flight. 

Aylesbury_Duck

You went on holiday knowing we are in exceptional times and a degree of worldwide chaos, so I'm afraid that expecting your trip to be anything like a normal holiday was unrealistic.  You are fortunate to have got home unscathed.  I don't see that the travel agent or airline have behaved unreasonably in this situation.   Leisure and travel companies are having to react quickly to constantly changing government advice across several time zones.

If you've got appropriate insurance for this sort of disruption, use it.  Otherwise I think you just have to accept your part in heading off on holiday in a global health emergency that has been known about for weeks.

jodie19890101

Thank you for your responses. As I appreciate feedback that we knew about the global crisis at the time of travel the FCO said Morocco wasnt an issue at that time. Neither Ryanair or Loveholidays offer us alternative travel to have out holiday at a later date so we would not have been able to claim for cancelled if we decided not to go. 
We have paid this for a holiday we have not had through no ones fault but the COVID-19 which yes is unpredictable. 

jimjiber

Just had an AMAZING online chat with Loveholidays customer service. Our trip to Malta next week has been cancelled, obviously, and we had paid the £877.02 in full.

I get that travel firms are really struggling right now and so are not giving refunds, despite all the ABTA/ATOL badges on their websites - they only protect you if the company goes bust.

So we have another holiday booked for August with Loveholidays and I have paid about a grand already. There is an outstanding balance of £875.23.

I made the CRAZY suggestion that they use what we are owed to pay off what's owing on the August holiday. I was told that this was not possible and the "refund credit note" can only be used on a new booking.

Does that seem fair to anyone?

They also said the credit note would just be for the hotel and transfers, not the flights. I booked the package with Loveholidays , who then booked the Ryanair flights. Obviously Ryanair are not going to refund me as I didn't book with them (they will only pay back to the card the flights were booked on).

This has really annoyed me. I am trying to be helpful and not just demand a refund and I get this.

To add insult to injury the live chat agent finished with "I will end this live chat I tried to assist you however I don't appreciate any type of not feeling appreciated".

Great customer service as always.

iceboots

We were due to go to Italy on Sunday 4th April through a loveholidays package. Ryanair cancelled the flight, we requested a refund, and we’ve now had it confirmed from loveholidays, that we will receive the flight money within 5 days. loveholidays want to give us a credit note, for the cost of the hotel. We know we can refuse the credit note and wait for a cash refund but unsure which option to take, as they’re unable to answer our questions on the live chat. loveholidays are giving us two options:

Option 1: You can keep your holiday, just change the dates

• Does this mean we get the same hotel at the same price?

Option 2: You can make a new booking with your personalised loveholidays refund credit note

• The credit note currently has today’s date, but if I log in tomorrow, will it have tomorrows date? As it’s valid for 12 months from when we accept it, should we put off accepting it as long as possible, as then it gives us more time to use it?
• If we take the credit note and book a holiday after the 31st July; will our credit note be ATOL/ABTA protected before we have booked a new holiday?

Can we accept one of these options after we’re due to fly?

If we choose neither and wait for a cash refund (‘option 3’), we know we won’t get the money until after 31st July. But after this date the money isn’t ATOL/ABTA protected. So if we choose the cash refund and loveholidays go under before the money in our account, does that mean we’re not covered and would lose our money? Are they obligated to give us the refund after 31st July as we’ll no longer be protected?