Secret Escapes - Furious!

Myersees

We were due to travel to Portugal on 9/7/20 & were cancelled by Secret Escapes (SE) who have only offered an account credit to be used within the year. After a year, if the credit is still there they will refund the cash to us. In the meantime, they will try & recoup our money from Jet2 airline, transfer company & hotel. They don’t give a timeframe for this. If Jet2 give a refund, which they probably will, the remaining credit will no longer be ATOL protected. How unfair is that? Anyone else in a similar position? 

I thought ATOL protection guaranteed its customers full refunds regardless & not on the proviso that Secret Escapes can get the money back first from the varying hotel, flight, transfer companies etc???? 

Very, very annoyed & disappointed at the sheer lack of professionalism & customer service displayed by SE. 

eskbanker

Package holiday providers are obliged by the Package Travel Regulations 2018 to refund in full (not via vouchers unless you agree to that), theoretically within 14 days and certainly not on the proviso of recovery of funds from their suppliers, but most such providers are failing to adhere to their legal obligations on that front....

prodgers66

Backs up the experience I had with SE. I’ll never book with them again, no matter how cheap it looks. 

Penguin1313

SE have over £2k of my money for my May Fuerteventura holiday, which I really need right now,  as an unemployed self-employed person (due to COVID). What are my options, as I do not want a refund or to rebook, and I paid by debit card last October 😢

eskbanker

Penguin1313 said:

SE have over £2k of my money for my May Fuerteventura holiday, which I really need right now,  as an unemployed self-employed person (due to COVID). What are my options, as I do not want a refund or to rebook, and I paid by debit card last October 😢

You don't want a refund or a rebook, what do you want (given the choice)?

macman

If you do want a refund, then do a chargeback on your debit card. This assumes that it was a package booking and that either the flights or accommodation was cancelled (you haven't given us much info to work on).

gem7smith

Has anyone managed to get a refund from secret Escapes due to covid cancelled holiday?