Lastminute.com court threat

klh90

Hello,
I am looking for some advice on a holiday that was booked to Ibiza in December 2019 for September 2020. This was for a friend's wedding which has since been cancelled.
We had only paid a deposit of £50 each and were expected to pay the remaining balance of around £500 by the end of August. After trying to contact Lastminute.com on several occasions leading up to this deadline to try to change or cancel the holiday, they sent me a cancellation request for over £200 more than the remaining balance of the holiday. We continued to try to get in touch with them to discuss this but we were unsuccessful which eventually led to them automatically trying to charge the remaining balance to my card. As I had already cancelled my card, they could not take the payment. They have since been in touch to inform me that the hotel which we had originally booked is now unavailable due to covid restrictions and offered us an alternative which we declined. They then told us that as San Antonio is severely restricted due to Covid-19, they do not have many alternatives to offer us. I replied to this email to say that I am not willing to risk travelling unnecessarily during such uncertain times and as a key worker, I am not able to quarantine upon return. This was completely ignored and yet another cancellation request was sent back to me, again with outrageous fees on top of the remaining balance. 
As the date of the holiday arrived, I received an email stating that if I do not pay the remaining balance of the holiday within the next 10 days, they will be undertaking court actions against me in order to retrieve the remaining balance. 
I am just looking for some advice as to where I stand with this situation! Thanks 

bradders1983

Take the cancelled wedding, and the 14 day Government restrictions on return, out of the equation. Its irrelevant to the case. 

I assume they are merely holding you to the terms you agreed to. I dont have sight of them so can you confirm this is the case?

Butts

Was it a package holiday that you booked - ie flights and hotel together ?

If it was technically by the time the balance of your holiday was due there would have been an FCO all but essential travel in place for Spain.

This would effectively cancel the holiday and negate your liability to pay any further monies.

It's all hot air the threats unless someone can provide documented evidence they have taken someone to Court in these circumstances.. The way they have conducted them selves during the pandemic  it's them who should be up before a beak.

bradders1983

The FCO advice is irrelevant because thats all it is: advice. Just thought I would throw that in there.

Now, had he booked the package with someone proper like Jet2 or TUI they would have cancelled it based on that advice anyway. But alas, here we are.

Butts

bradders1983 said:

The FCO advice is irrelevant because thats all it is: advice. Just thought I would throw that in there.

Now, had he booked the package with someone proper like Jet2 or TUI they would have cancelled it based on that advice anyway. But alas, here we are.

It's not irrelevant but debatable, I used it to cancel a Holiday with BA and had no problems whatsoever.
Don''t forget last Minute are a member of ABTA as well, unless they have also left or more likely been kicked out 

bagand96

Cancellation charges will be set out in the Terms and Conditions you signed up to.  Even though you only payed a £50 deposit, you can often end up owing more than that, even if you cancelled the very next day. This would be the case if non-refundable flights (i.e Ryanair) formed part of the booking. 

However the full balance plus more on top does seem steep!

The FCO advice one is difficult. As the posters above have said, proper tour operators like TUI and Jet2 have cancelled holidays on the back of it. It's a grey area on whether the law says an agent must cancel a holiday on FCO advice. 

ABTA have stated their members should allow customers to cancel on FCO advice, and LM.com are ABTA members.  The one problem you may have with that is if LM claim you'd already initiated cancellation, so it fell under therefore it was under customer cancellation and not agent cancellation. 

Butts

bagand96 said:

What you owe Lastminute.com will be set out in the Terms and Conditions you signed up to.  Even though you only payed a £50 deposit, you may owe them more than that, even if you cancelled the very next day. This would be the case if non-refundable flights (i.e Ryanair) formed part of the booking. 

However the full balance plus more on top does seem steep!

The FCO advice one is difficult. As the posters above have said, proper tour operators like TUI and Jet2 have cancelled holidays on the back of it. However it's a very grey area on whether the law says an agent must cancel a holiday on FCO advice. 

ABTA have stated their members should allow customers to cancel on FCO advice, and LM.com are ABTA members.  The one problem you may have with that is if LM claim you'd already requested cancellation by that point, therefore it was under the terms of customer initiated cancellation and not agent initiated. 

Their terms and Conditions aren't worth a wan*.....
On mine it stated the whole balance for the hotel element of the package would be due even if I cancelled the day after i booked.
Just a little illegality for you to muse over 

paulcarr

Hi, booked a holiday with LastMinute.com for Spain. Due to COVID restrictions and many in the party being key workers, decided to cancel in August. Followed the procedure on the LM App and after chasing them for weeks finally received confirmation that the cancellation request had been received and was being processed. In the meanwhile, our return flight to Newcastle had been cancelled and we were transferred onto a different flight which meant losing 25% of the holiday duration. The booked hotel was closed due to COVID and we were offered an alternative hotel. Each time we contacted LM and stated we had already applied to cancel the holiday. They confirmed each time that the cancellation request had been received and was being processed.
After 4-weeks (they were very busy!) they confirmed cancellation charges of £1,100, however, the email made no sense and talked about if we accepted the refund, money would be paid into account in a few days? We had at that stage only paid our deposit. we wrote asking for clarification and a breakdown of the charges, however, this week we received an email stating as we had not paid the final balance, we were in breach, that THEY were cancelling the holiday and demanded 90% of the holiday costs in damages! 

Can anyone advise where we stand on this please? 

mattyprice4004

The problem is you cancelled before they did - and as such they may well try and force the issue. 

Truth is they’re absolutely snowed under so very little seems to be making sense from them at the moment. 

paulcarr

We accepted the fact that we would incur cancellation charges for voluntary cancellation and were prepared to pay reasonable costs.  According to their T&C’s these are time critical, the earlier you cancel, chances are the less you may have to pay. Notwithstanding the fact that if they had processed our request to cancel sooner (5-weeks) it may have cost less, but we had still requested to cancel the holiday in August (which they acknowledged 3 times and therefore surely the cannot hold us in breach and seek damages for not paying the final balance in September ?

bagand96

paulcarr said:

We accepted the fact that we would incur cancellation charges for voluntary cancellation and were prepared to pay reasonable costs.  According to their T&C’s these are time critical, the earlier you cancel, chances are the less you may have to pay. Notwithstanding the fact that if they had processed our request to cancel sooner (5-weeks) it may have cost less, but we had still requested to cancel the holiday in August (which they acknowledged 3 times and therefore surely the cannot hold us in breach and seek damages for not paying the final balance in September ?

If they acknowledged your cancellation request, then I would say you should only pay the cancellation charges that were applicable at that time.  With their acknowledgement you should have a pretty bullet proof argument of that.  Go through the T&Cs you agreed to and find out exactly what you should owe - be mindful that the cancellation charges may include 100% of the flight cost.

The problem you have is getting Lastminute.com to agree to this without much more hassle.  Not the best company to deal with at any time, but certainly not at the moment.  Whether their court threats have any weight or not - nobody knows.  Stand your ground though, act reasonably, and decide how far you would be willing to take it.