chargeback

suedesai

I booked a flight with emailflights.com. The flight was cancelled and they would return the cost minus £75 admin fee. So I told them I was going for chargeback. They replied that it was in their terms and conditions that if I do chargeback they would charge me an extra £50 in addition to the £75 for them to fight it. Is this legal?

eskbanker

Not legal to the best of my knowledge - they do indeed include that in their terms but I don't believe it would withstand scrutiny from Trading Standards, CMA or a court....

https://book.emailflights.com/pages/terms

There will be a compulsory £50 administration fee per person for any chargebacks or credit card disputes which we have to defend. This fee would be additional to the general £75 administration fee [which is listed under denied boarding, cancellation, etc].

happy_hazelnuts

£75 is not even remotely near to the actual 'admin' costs which would be more like £7.50.

DanielaDSV

I used the same company and got told the same thing, now applying via M&S credit card. Have you got any further with your refund or chargeback?

Sandtree

eskbanker said:

Not legal to the best of my knowledge

Why would it not be legal? 

Chargeback is a not a statutory right but simply some T&Cs of Mastercard etc. Ever look at a small business forum and they will always say not to bother to fight a chargeback as banks always side with their customers/consumers but to recover your losses via the small claims court instead. It takes time (and so money) to respond to chargeback requests and they can ultimately impact the merchant fees charged/amount of funds withheld etc.

Playing devils advocate here obviously but if the original fee was legally allowable and the OPs actions have caused the business further losses why would it not be legal for them to recover those losses?

eskbanker

Yes, agreed that chargeback isn't a statutory right but I was basing my comments on the CMA's stance on full refunds at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cma-to-investigate-concerns-about-cancellation-policies-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic/the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic-consumer-contracts-cancellation-and-refunds, which imply to me that they'd consider such contract terms unenforceable (either the admin fee or the card defence one).  However, I haven't traced it all the way through to actual legislation and it may be that intermediaries are allowed to levy such fees even though airlines and package organisers are obliged to refund in full.

DanielaDSV

I agree with them covering their losses but charging £75 per passenger admin fee plus £50 to defend the chargeback is a lot