Loveholidays impossible to contact and they have my money from TUI

TylerDurden36

Yesterday I had a refund of £111 from Tui which I paid them directly for the extra legroom seats on my flight. I had booked through Loveholidays and paid them all the money apart from the extra legroom seats. They owed me £950 in total. So I rang them and asked where the remaining £840 was. They told me the money was refunded to a card that wasn’t mine. After a bit of back and forth they said that the card will have been the one Loveholidays used to pay them. So now Loveholidays need to pay me this £840 which I know for a fact they have received from TUI. But it is impossible to get hold of them. They have got rid of their telephone system and are using the worst live chat system I have ever come across. There is no queuing system on the live chat so you have to keep refreshing the page and hope someone is available when you do. Which of course it never does. I tried for 2 hours yesterday and I’ve been trying since 9am when they opened this morning. So angry about all of this. I’ll never use loveholidays for a holiday in future. How am I going to get this money back?!!

hollie.weimeraner

Email them with the information and give them 14 days to respond and threaten County Court Action if not received?
Alternatively contact the ombudsman

Browntoa

Or accept that it's unprecedented times and that yes loveholidays have your money but they are extremely busy and will get your refund to you in a couple of weeks 

TylerDurden36

hollie.weimeraner said:

Email them with the information and give them 14 days to respond and threaten County Court Action if not received?
Alternatively contact the ombudsman

I have just emailed them but according to a lot of other people they never respond to emails. They never respond on Facebook. I don’t understand why they have closed their phone system. I got through to TUI within 5 minutes who have been really helpful. Always booked with loveholidays in the past but after all this I’ll never use them again.

TylerDurden36

Browntoa said:

Or accept that it's unprecedented times and that yes loveholidays have your money but they are extremely busy and will get your refund to you in a couple of weeks 

From what other people are saying that are in the same situation as me, they will drag it out as long as possible. I’ve spoke to people who have been waiting for refunds for 2 months. TUI have sent the money to them so I know they have it. 

All this should never have happened in the first place because loveholidays should have paid me the money back directly instead of passing the buck to TUI. Total farce.

Browntoa

How can loveholidays pay back your money before it's refunded to them , totally unrealistic expections in the current situation. 

TylerDurden36

Browntoa said:

How can loveholidays pay back your money before it's refunded to them , totally unrealistic expections in the current situation. 

It was refunded to them at the exact same time as me according to TUI. So no it’s not unrealistic to expect them to return it to me as soon as they have it. Takes less than 30 seconds to make a money transfer.
If I could get hold of them I wouldn’t be as angry but it’s the fact that’s it’s basically impossible to get hold of them that’s making me angry. Every other company including TUI are easily reachable but they just seem to be dodging responsibility by shutting down their phone system and never responding to emails and not using a decent live chat system.

Browntoa

Or they are not the biggest company and are snowed under with an historically high number of customers trying to contact whilst also attempting to do refunds.

The refund to them needs to be reconciled with a customer , I suspect not a 5 minute job .

TUI are more able to cope as they have a far bigger customer service centre and are rumoured to be employing an outside company to do refunds for them ( ATOL did the same after the Thomas Cook administration ) 

Alan_Bowen

Browntoa, I appreciate your defence, and expecting a refund the day after they have been received is ridiculous but if you have been following this board you must admit they are one of the most frequently complained about companies. They have told many people to make the request for a refund from the airline, which could only happen if the customer's card had been used to pay, which we can see was not the case here or in most if not all cases. That suggests a company selling a million holidays, so no small business at all, was intentionally lying to customers to delay the process. I would like to think there is another explanation but I cannot think of one. 

Dottydoolay

Although I appreciate Love holidays are being an absolute nightmare with most customers the next day for a refund is a bit unrealistic.
I did well compared to most and the flight refund was received 4 days after the due travel date with accommodation actually received today holiday was 23rd April.
I didn’t actually contact them I left the lines free for those with a greater need if that’s you then of course battle on and good luck as they have indeed been a nightmare for most.

Browntoa

My understanding is that they have a small team , all currently working from home hence the turning off of phone lines and limiting online chat as staff cannot do chat and process refunds at the same time . 

I agree that hey have been getting a hammering on here and I have 2 loveholidays bookings myself , 1 just cancelled and another later in the year. They were prompt with the cancellation email and I am awaiting a call about refund options.

My point is that I'm assuming they get perhaps 5000 flight refunds en masse a day which then have to be identified and assigned to a customer and that is a day on day event. People really need to be realistic in their expectations of timeframes for refund processing