Need advice on trying to get Villa refund

Bobbymac1979

So holiday planned for June now not going ahead, flights will be refunded as the carrier have cancelled, villa on other hand was booked from someone we knew at daughters sports club who owns the villa and we have paid them for it already. Struggling to get money back at this stage as non-refundable they claim, there wasn’t any contract or anything like that, simply an exchange of facebook messages stating the dates we wanted and cost of renting villa etc and how to pay etc, 

Where do we stand on trying to get a refund and how would this be covered by our insurance company if we struggled to get money back, would we need an official receipt from them or can we push them harder to get a refund. Obviously we never expected this to happen so at a road block and any advice would be great 
Thanks

Aylesbury_Duck

If the villa is available (and at the moment, I assume it is?) then any refund is discretionary since it's you that is cancelling.

If you went down the insurance route, your insurer would want evidence you've paid, yes.

Bobbymac1979

Aylesbury_Duck said:

If the villa is available (and at the moment, I assume it is?) then any refund is discretionary since it's you that is cancelling.

If you went down the insurance route, your insurer would want evidence you've paid, yes.

You can’t book the villa anymore til September, 

They use a company to book the villa out but as this was mates rates in theory we went direct to her instead of through the renting company, on the renting company website they are usually non/refundable but for April and May they are now doing refunds, haven’t said about June yet, so might wait a little longer and hopefully it works out 
thanks