Expedia/British Airways Holiday Cancellation - no one wants to deal with airline tickets

JBBuckinghamshire

I booked a holiday (flight + car) to California 12 February (all booked through Expedia; credit card statement shows separate charges - car to Expedia and flights to BA). I have an ATOL certificate (the certificate says it is package single-contract) and insurance for the trip (purchased early enough to cover despite COVID-19). Departure was scheduled for 4 April. 24 March I was notified of flight cancellation by BA; in order to get money back on car hire, I cancelled package with Expedia a few days later. Expedia says they refunded their part of the obligation (I have had money back on the car booking) and I need to talk to BA about the tickets. BA now says that since package was cancelled I am not entitled to either refund or vouchers. Who do I talk to next?

eskbanker

JBBuckinghamshire said:

I cancelled package with Expedia

If this was literally a customer-initiated cancellation then you're at the mercy of Expedia's customer cancellation terms, which are likely to be way less generous than how they'd have to act if they'd cancelled, and possibly won't involve any refund for the flights.  Do you have anything from Expedia that would state or suggest that they'd cancelled your trip?

JBBuckinghamshire

Sadly, no nothing from Expedia except emails from them not received until a few days after I was scheduled to travel saying not to do anything about package holidays yet. But if I hadn't cancelled the car in advance of the trip, I suspect I wouldn't have had that money back, as the car hire place would have treated it as a no-show, and the email I got when the car cancellation went through actually came from the car hire company, although the money came from Expedia.

When BA said they weren't obliged to give refunds or vouchers because the package had been cancelled (even though I only cancelled the package after they told me the flight had been cancelled), I tried to get hold of Expedia but their phone system hung up on me a few times after I'd been on hold for times ranging from 30 minutes to an hour. I have tried Expedia's online chat, but not got any answers from that either.

Should I try a chargeback or insurance claim or keep pursuing Expedia/BA?

eskbanker

Strictly speaking I'm not sure you have a leg to stand on if you chose to cancel - obviously you felt you had to given the difficulties of making contact, but if you'd just waited until Expedia cancelled then you'd have refund rights resulting from them cancelling, which you don't have when you cancelled yourself.

However, if you have evidence of numerous unsuccessful attempts to contact Expedia at the time, plus the BA cancellation notification, then it would be worth raising a formal complaint to Expedia, explaining that you effectively felt the need to take unilateral action in the absence of them advising you that your trip couldn't go ahead.  You can't realistically claim anything from BA or your card company though, but your insurance might pay out if you don't succeed with Expedia....

Edit: just realised that your difficulties contacting Expedia are more recent and obviously you did succeed in contacting them at the time, so that will weaken your case.

JBBuckinghamshire

Actually, I have never been able to contact anyone at Expedia - they refunded the car hire charge within about two weeks of the online cancellation but I have never been able to speak to anyone or get any advice other than what's on their website, which is very unclear. I waited for them to follow up with me, as I had two emails from them indicating that they would give me information, but I haven't heard anything from them since 6 April.

I also have screenshots that show the flights cancelled on the BA website but me still as a confirmed customer on 2 April (two days before I was due to fly).

I pursued Expedia via online, webchat and by phone since then (while also trying to contact BA about refunds or vouchers), but have never been able to speak with either BA or Expedia - both cut off my calls either immediately (BA) or between 30 and 60 minutes or so. So I am now here asking for help, because I've reached the end of my tether.

eskbanker

I was trying to convey that on the face of it, nobody is obliged to refund your flights, because it's a matter of fact that you cancelled the trip via Expedia, which essentially rules out assistance from any party other than Expedia.

However, there are mitigating circumstances if you were repeatedly trying unsuccessfully to obtain clarification about the status of your trip from Expedia in between BA notifying the flight cancellation and the departure date, so in order to have any chance of getting those flights refunded you have to persuade Expedia (or maybe ultimately a court) that you effectively had to cancel online because Expedia failed to advise you of what was happening.  Your later difficulties communicating with Expedia, frustrating as they undoubtedly will be, are less relevant - it's specifically the period between 24 March and 4 April that you have to concentrate on when making a case.

JBBuckinghamshire

This item is from the Expedia website (it's on the refund timelines page on the Expedia UK site):

Cars

• Pre-paid bookings must be cancelled at least 6 hours prior to pick-up for a full refund.
• If you return your prepaid car hire early, you will not be refunded for any unused time.

This is a good indicator to me that if I hadn't made the cancellation, I would've been billed for the car, even though my flight had been cancelled so I couldn't get there to pick the car up. In other words, if I hadn't initiated the cancellation myself, I wouldn't have had that money, either, since the guidance to wait for further instructions from Expedia came 6 April - two days after I was due to pick up the car.

I will file a formal complaint with them, but also raise a query with my credit card company, I think, as the instruction above seems pretty clear.

JBBuckinghamshire

Sorry, didn't spot your 4.04pm response until I posted the item above. I am still pursuing Expedia and spent 50+ minutes on hold trying to speak with someone today (while I was posting the item that went up at 4.29). Thanks for your advice.

eskbanker

JBBuckinghamshire said:

This is a good indicator to me that if I hadn't made the cancellation, I would've been billed for the car, even though my flight had been cancelled so I couldn't get there to pick the car up. In other words, if I hadn't initiated the cancellation myself, I wouldn't have had that money, either, since the guidance to wait for further instructions from Expedia came 6 April - two days after I was due to pick up the car.

I can see why you might think that but if you hadn't cancelled the whole booking, Expedia would still have been on the hook for its entire cost - it's not up to you to cancel individual components of a package but Expedia's responsibility to deal with their suppliers.  As soon as BA cancelled the flight, your holiday was effectively over and Expedia were from then on responsible for refunding it all, but critically they needed to tell you that, and it's their failure to do that that's led to this situation, so they should be held to account for that.

eskbanker

I've just noticed on another thread a line of argument that you should be able to deploy....

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6162839/british-airways-no-refund-hotel-would-re-book-but-ba-not-paid-hotel-and-ba-trousered-the-cash#latest involves dialogue with Which? legal services and they highlight regulation 12 in the Package Travel Regulations 2018:

(7) Notwithstanding paragraphs (2) to (6), in the event of unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances occurring at the place of destination or its immediate vicinity and which significantly affect—

(a)the performance of the package, or

(b)the carriage of passengers to the destination,

the traveller may terminate the package travel contract before the start of the package without paying any termination fee.

(8) Where the package travel contract is terminated under paragraph (7), the traveller is entitled to a full refund of any payments made for the package but is not entitled to additional compensation.

I think you could legitimately argue to Expedia that you had the right to terminate the package travel contract because of unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances affecting the carriage of passengers to the destination (hence the flight cancellation, FCO advice against travelling, etc), and that under the last paragraph they're obliged to refund you in full.

JBBuckinghamshire

Thank you so much for this information! I will get back to work on this in the morning.