STA Travel & ATOL

leoniliebert

Hi,
Wondering if anyone can answer this question for me: 
I had a booking with STA travel which was partly taken up until return in April. I am trying to claim for all bookings which were never started and have submitted a claim with ATOL, including my ATOL certificate which does cover me for the things I am trying to claim back. Does anyone know how long approximately it takes for ATOL claims to be processed and to receive the funds?

Thanks

bagand96

The FAQ's on the ATOL website say they will acknowledge a claim within 5 days and aim to process it within 28.

It can take a lot longer though.  As an example, Thomas Cook collapsed on 23rd September last year.  A news story in January this year quoted the CAA as saying 95% of Thomas Cook claims had been settled.  STA was obviously a much smaller operation so you would hope they might be quicker, although with a failure the size of Thomas Cook they outsourced a lot of the claims handling.

Chordeiles

As this was 11 months ago I can't help wondering if you got your claim paid.  An update would be appreciated by those of us who are just starting the claims process.  So far my impression is that the process is far from straightforward - and deliberately so - as if they want me to lose the will to live before I complete the process.

Westin

Chordeiles - Can I ask why you are only now commencing a claim via the CAA/ATOL scheme against losses from the STA collapse?

Alan_Bowen

If you really haven't begun, you are too late anyway as claims have to be made within 12 months of the collapse of the business and that time has passed. The CAA website specifically mentions STA as one business whose claims will be refused if submitted now!

Chordeiles

Sadly there are ATOL protected travel companies ceasing to trade every month, including (this month), a company with nearly £6000 of my money.  So my claim isn't relating to STA Travel (I'd be way too late anyway, as you point out).  But on the assumption that the claims process should be the same I'd have been more than interested in how the OP got on.  But he never told us.
As I'd love to have had a practical guide through the process (which I'm starting to realise is "deliberately awkward"), I'm minded to post my experiences here.  Except as you say, the thread title refers to STA.  Maybe I'll start a new thread that's not company-specific.  Though here the OP was clearly looking for experiences with previous failures, so I feel you are taking the title of the thread too literally already.

Westin

I know it is frustrating when some posters ask a question, for advice or help - receive it - then never return to the thread.  As you suggest, if people would respond and update on their posts then their experiences, process followed and out come might well help others searching for similar.

Although the ATOL claim process is likely paper heavy and requires manual interventions, for those that have their paperwork in order and forms completed correctly, I suspect it is not too cumbersome. I had a friend who helped with the Thomas Cook claims process and she used to tell me of a few stories on the state of the claims, missing information, missing supporting documents, no Thomas Cook booking details etc.  Some claims nothing even to do with the collapse of Thomas Cook! 

Manage expectations on refund timelines but I am sure you will be successful providing the claim is correctly made. Good luck.

Alan_Bowen

TC was a real exception to the rule, there were 150,000 to bring home, and around 400,000 forward bookings. The CAA had to appoint outside agencies to cope and still were able to start paying within 3 months. No failure in recent months is even 100th of that size and 4-6 weeks if the usual time scale for small failures. At present most failures are occurring due to a lack of bookings, so claims should be simple if you follow the rules set out on the CAA website. In the case of TC, they had to weed out 85,000 claims that were either completely fraudulent or simply not valid claims, with small failures that situation is very rare

Chordeiles

Just in the past two days I got my claims (two holidays, two claims) paid in full, so I'm happy now.
The CAA website was seriously awful, but managed to navigate it somehow and claims were then passed to an agency "Protect Claims".  Now a process of submitting scanned documents to them to substantiate the claim, but at least their website made a whole lot more sense.
One form requested was not only irrelevant but impossible to supply (was expected to fill it out on CAA website, but drop-downs did not include suitable answers !).  But at least the Protect Claims website had a mechanism for offering an explanation why it was not sent.
Biggest obstacle was that historical bank statements were not acceptable (on their own) as evidence of deposits paid by electronic transfer, and Protect Claims insisted on a letter from my bank detailing the sort code and account number to which the payments were made.  I can see the point because the payee description in these cases is just what I hade typed myself when logged in to the bank.  But hey, I had receipts from the failed company for these amounts, so clearly the level of fraud they are expecting is exceptional !
Now I struggled to get that letter out of my bank (which used to boast that it was the UK's most recommended bank, but has long since lost that accolade).  Actually it took a complaint to get that letter out of them, maybe a blessing in disguise as otherwise I'd almost certainly have been charged for it, and it's clear such charges will NOT be reimbursed in the ATOL claim.
But thereafter has moved quite quickly to the point where the sums got credited back to my account.