Travel Republic - extra charges and hidden messages

JoW1968

We booked a holiday (flight/hotel/transfer package) to Turkey with Travel Republic last December, due to depart on 11 Aug 2020. The balance of the flight element of the package was due and paid in full on 20 January. The balance for the hotel and transfer is due on 28 July. We received an email from TR on 26 Jun to assure us that they would contact us if there was a problem with the booking (due to possible cancellations or restrictions) and they are in the process of contacting customers in order of date of travel, and were contacting customers 14 days before travel with all options available, which we thought was fair enough, given how busy they must be at the moment. This is the only communication we have received from them.
Out of curiosity last weekend I logged on to the "Manage Booking" section on their site. There was a new "customer support request" on the Transfer part of the booking, I followed the link and there was a long and detailed message dated 3 July explaining our options to either travel as planned or amend to a later date. We needed to reply to this message by 10 Jul if we wanted to change our booking. We didn't actually see the message until 12 July because TR hadn't sent an email to let us know there was a support request on our booking, and the support request was "hidden" on the Transfer element of the booking. They should have emailed us about this, we aren't in the habit of logging into "Manage Booking" regularly and we shouldn't have to be - I can appreciate they are very busy, but we are both essential workers and also very busy ourselves! And then tonight, again out of curiosity, I logged in again and the flight element of the booking - which we paid IN FULL on 20 Jan, (and which was showing as PAID IN FULL when I logged in last weekend) was now showing an overdue balance of £0.50 which must be paid immediately or they may cancel the holiday. On viewing the invoice on the site and comparing it to our invoice from January, an extra £0.50 booking fee has been added in the last few days without a single email being sent to let us know about it! Now, while 50p is neither here nor there, a balance of £984 already paid could have been lost if we hadn't paid that 50p straight away - why didn't they email us to let us know? 
In the past I have always been very impressed by Travel Republic's customer support in difficult times. We had a holiday cancelled when Monarch went bust, and again last year when Thomas Cook went under, and both times TR have issued swift refunds with no complaints at all. While I realise these are "unprecedented" times, I am disgusted with their lack of communication during the last few weeks and the fact that due to lack of communication we lost the opportunity to amend our booking and then could have lost a substantial amount of money due to them adding a random 50p fee without telling us! Fingers crossed our holiday goes ahead with no more problems but I will NOT book with them again!

gally56

Do you know you have described word for word what has happened to us right down to the 3rd of July message hidden away on the transfer section of our booking info on our "Manage Booking Page" and the "if we don't hear from you by July 10th we will take it you are going"
The only we have is we paid to fly out on Friday 24th at 19:35 as we will both be working on that day till 1pm and "MY Booking" still show us as being down for that flight.
However when i went to check on on Easy Jet I find out that that flight has been cancelled and they have us flying out at 6 am which is very hard to do as I don't start work until 6 am. 
Neither Travel Republic not Easy Jet sent us any notification of the flight cancellation or that we were being put on this flight.
I only discovered the email directing me to the  "3rd of July" support message in MY Booking  when I went into my Spam Folder but funny how every other email I got from Travel Republic in regard to my holiday  always goes in my inbox.
My wife and I are desperately trying to see if we can get the day off to get the early morning flight but its not looking good

[Deleted User]

gally56 said:

I only discovered the email directing me to the  "3rd of July" support message in MY Booking  when I went into my Spam Folder but funny how every other email I got from Travel Republic in regard to my holiday  always goes in my inbox.

It's not that funny, really.

The increased email volumes are throwing up spam warnings for a lot of companies.  It's an ongoing challenge for bulk emailers.

westy74

JoW1968 said:

We booked a holiday (flight/hotel/transfer package) to Turkey with Travel Republic last December, due to depart on 11 Aug 2020. The balance of the flight element of the package was due and paid in full on 20 January. The balance for the hotel and transfer is due on 28 July. We received an email from TR on 26 Jun to assure us that they would contact us if there was a problem with the booking (due to possible cancellations or restrictions) and they are in the process of contacting customers in order of date of travel, and were contacting customers 14 days before travel with all options available, which we thought was fair enough, given how busy they must be at the moment. This is the only communication we have received from them.
Out of curiosity last weekend I logged on to the "Manage Booking" section on their site. There was a new "customer support request" on the Transfer part of the booking, I followed the link and there was a long and detailed message dated 3 July explaining our options to either travel as planned or amend to a later date. We needed to reply to this message by 10 Jul if we wanted to change our booking. We didn't actually see the message until 12 July because TR hadn't sent an email to let us know there was a support request on our booking, and the support request was "hidden" on the Transfer element of the booking. They should have emailed us about this, we aren't in the habit of logging into "Manage Booking" regularly and we shouldn't have to be - I can appreciate they are very busy, but we are both essential workers and also very busy ourselves! And then tonight, again out of curiosity, I logged in again and the flight element of the booking - which we paid IN FULL on 20 Jan, (and which was showing as PAID IN FULL when I logged in last weekend) was now showing an overdue balance of £0.50 which must be paid immediately or they may cancel the holiday. On viewing the invoice on the site and comparing it to our invoice from January, an extra £0.50 booking fee has been added in the last few days without a single email being sent to let us know about it! Now, while 50p is neither here nor there, a balance of £984 already paid could have been lost if we hadn't paid that 50p straight away - why didn't they email us to let us know? 
In the past I have always been very impressed by Travel Republic's customer support in difficult times. We had a holiday cancelled when Monarch went bust, and again last year when Thomas Cook went under, and both times TR have issued swift refunds with no complaints at all. While I realise these are "unprecedented" times, I am disgusted with their lack of communication during the last few weeks and the fact that due to lack of communication we lost the opportunity to amend our booking and then could have lost a substantial amount of money due to them adding a random 50p fee without telling us! Fingers crossed our holiday goes ahead with no more problems but I will NOT book with them again!

Same issue with our booking with TR. Am due to travel on 17/08/20 to Zante, Greece. Balance was paid in full last year and TR have tried to get us to sign a Covid-19 waiver to continue with our holiday or choose to amend booking for future date. Informed them we would not agree to waiver and did not want to amend holiday either. A week later, around 10th July when I checked my booking to see if there was any response from TR, a mysterious £0.50 charge had appeared on our booking with instruction to pay this final balance or risk holiday being cancelled. Of course I paid this to prevent any cancellation (even though this was a brand new charge -apparently a booking fee that hadn't been on our original invoice hence we should not have been asked to pay this). I then got a new invoice emailed over with a 'Covid-19 waiver' attached and info within email that we had agreed to this waiver even though we hadn't! We had booked a single package holiday with TR incorporating flight out with Jet2, accommodation and return flight with TUI so fully covered for any significant changes to our holiday etc. I have since found out that TUI is no longer operating flights on a Monday to Zante therefore I contacted TUI directly and they confirmed our flight was cancelled. I queried this with TR immediately but two weeks later have still not had any response from TR to tell us our flight (and holiday) is cancelled. TUI advised that we would have to go through TR to obtain a full refund for our overall holiday but they would release the funds for the flight to them immediately once TR had requested this from them. TUI have already refunded us what we paid for reserved seating which was purchased later directly through the TUI website. So, I know we are not going on holiday and have done for over 2 weeks now but TR still haven't told us our package holiday is cancelled! Disgraceful service from TR. My advice to others who had a single contract package booked is to check if your flights and accommodation are still operating. You can do this by checking your airline flight schedule for this summer to find out what flights are operating on different days and then go to your accommodations website and email them for updates.