Consumer rights: holiday cottage booked in Cornwall 10-17 April

cornwallholiday · 31 March 2020 at 4:44AM

Hi,
I would appreciate some advice please. We have a holiday house booked in Cornwall for 10-17 April. Obviously we are now prohibited from going and owner prohibited from letting out his property due to coronavirus.

The owner is refusing any form of reconciliation: he won’t give any refund or credit voucher. We are at an impasse.

He says we should cancel the holiday with the agent. But the contract clearly says that if we cancel we are not entitled to any refund. So we are in breach of the contract if we cancel.

If he cancels we are due a full refund under the terms and conditions. But he won’t do this.

So we have a stalemate with a live booking that we can’t use. Has this booking been cancelled by default due to situation?

He is holding a damage deposit and the full rental which is over £4K. The agent has confirmed they will refund their service fee but only if we cancel.

This feels grossly unfair and we are now trapped in this impasse. We are strongly considering taking him to small claims court if this can’t be resolved. But would a claim be based on frustration of contract (would this be successful?) or can we argue that, by default, the holiday is cancelled due to coronavirus restrictions and therefore we are due a refund?

Thank you for reading this - any advice very gratefully received.