Refund of Flights - Admin Fee

KKG1985

Hi looking for a bit of advice on how to proceed with a refund for Flights booked to, in and home from Australia.

I booked a multi-flight trip through Carlton Leisure in Feb this year - there are 12 flights in total (6 for me and 6 for my partner) - Emirates have emailed confirming the flights have been cancelled and advised to contact whoever the flights were booked through. I done this and never heard back for over 1 month. I emailed Carlton Leisure again and they replied saying that they would refund the amount I paid other than £75 per person for an admin fee. I questioned this and they then replied with their terms and conditions which explained there would be a £75 charge per person per ticket. I have now advised them I want a refund in full and they have offered a refund to reduce the admin fee to £50 per person. I have asked several times for them to clarify if the admin fee is per person or per person per ticket and they have never clarified this, they just ignore the question.

I have now raised a disputed charge with my credit card company (the flights were booked via credit card) and they have advised they will get back to me in 60 days due to volume of live disputes at the moment.

The first flight is due to be on 15th May and what I would like to know is should I accept the refund offer and take the hit of £100 (or £900 if it is indeed a charge per person per ticket) or wait and see what happens with my credit card dispute. My concern is that the flights were supposed to be within the 60 day time frame and do not know if I wait for the credit card company to get back to me it will be too late and will not get a refund at all.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks

Browntoa

The £75 per ticket is quite clear in their terms and conditions ( which you signed up to )

Butts

Browntoa said:

The £75 per ticket is quite clear in their terms and conditions ( which you signed up to )

I would argue £75 per ticket is an unreasonable charge and not justifiable rendering it an unfair term and therefore invalid regardless of whether you agreed to it or not.

KKG1985

Thank you for your comment - I understand that these are in the terms and conditions however I did not cancel the flights. I thought that if you had paid for a service and you do not receive the service you would get a full refund?

My concern is that they will not confirm in their emails to me if I will  be paying £100 admin fee or £600 if it is per ticket - which would be more than half of the cost of the flights. I would rather pay £100 than get nothing back at all. 
A few friends have told me that the credit card company will just put the money back on the card but I don't know how true that is. So want to know if I should accept the offer from the travel company or wait until the credit card company get back to me and risk getting nothing if after 60 days the flight company wont refund at all.

Browntoa

The company have offered a refund , I suspect the credit card companies will refuse a section 75 claim on those grounds .

KKG1985

Thanks - I am unsure of what a section 75 is.
The flight company are asking for me to reply to email stating 'I am happy to submit a refund application agreeing to the amount stated in the email' - but they will not confirm the total cost as to whether it is £50 per person or per person per ticket - this is why I have raised a dispute with the credit card company.

Thanks

KKG1985

Do you think if I wait and the credit card company rejects it would be too late for the flight company to give a refund?

Caz3121

This is a downside of using a third party to book flights rather than booking directly with the airline. You cannot deal direct with the airline and will need them to apply for the refund on your behalf (as they are the airline's customer) any refund will go to them and then they need to process the refund back to you. They tend not to do work for free....if they waived fees I suspect they would be unable to pay their staff to be able to do the work required for the volume of refunds. - although you did not cancel, neither did they and the work is still required to get the refund back to you.
(note - I don't use third parties as I don't like their business model much - advertise a cheap fare and charge extra fees, so many of them have poor customer service and high fees)
You mention 6 flights each, if you have one booking reference for Emirates I would assume that these are 2 tickets. Emirates tickets start with 176, can you see your ticket numbers in any of your documentation?

Life__Goes__On

If you look at 13 in T&Cs  it's clearly to do if you cancel   nothing to do with the airline cancelling.

13.2.1 There is no automatic right to a refund and, when you return an air ticket to us
13.2.2 Air tickets returned to us for a refund are subject to an administration charge of £75 per ticket, irrespective of the number of tickets returned. You will be required to pay a per ticket cancellation charge, imposed by the airline or the consolidator pursuant to their terms and conditions.

13.2.1  You never returned the ticket.
13.2.2  The paragraph is clearly about if you cancel,  as if the airline cancelled, the airline could not   impose a charge.

No wonder they would have settled for £50,  as they have badly worded their T&Cs, and trying to  point to a cause  that doesn't apply.