Cancelled holiday/lost deposit

Jjmbrown1

Hi all hope you can help


we booked a holiday for Greece/Corfu for September back in March before international travel plans were revealed by the govt on 17th may. 

The govt then released the traffic light system and we didn’t fancy going to an amber place, even despite the double jabbed no isolation policy. 

I tried and tried and tried relentlessly to cancel through jet2 and they would not get back to me over any of their communication channels till I finally got through the day before the deposit was due and they cancelled the holiday at my request. I argued getting the deposit back but I simply couldn’t be bothered as it took so long to get through i just wanted to confirm the cancellation and make sure they didn’t take £2500 out of my account ( and risk losing that if we tested positive etc in Greece on the way etc).

long story short we lost £174. £120 deposit and £54 insurance. Is there any possible way of getting this back? For ref I paid on Amex.

thanks

68ComebackSpecial

Claim on the insurance you paid for - assuming that it covers you for cancelling because "we didn’t fancy going to an amber place", which is highly unlikely.

phillw

https://competitionandmarkets.blog.gov.uk/2019/06/27/holiday-deposits-and-cancellation-fees-are-you-being-treated-fairly/

Businesses are entitled to ask customers to pay a fee if they cancel – or to keep some of an upfront deposit – to cover their losses. But the amount they keep must be in proportion to what they are actually losing as a result of a cancellation.

I don't know how much of the £174 they are "entitled to". 

Some travel insurance can be cancelled and refunded if you have not travelled and have no reason to claim, you need to talk to your insurer.

sheramber

You chose to cancel so lose your deposit.

Disinclination to travel is not a valid claim for S75 and I doubt your travel insurance covers it either.

If it did, your excess is probably more than that.

pbartlett

"I argued getting the deposit back but I simply couldn’t be bothered as it took so long to get through"

Not sure what this means - did you ask for the deposit back on the phone and what did they say?

Pollycat

Why do you think you are entitled to your deposit back?

We had a holiday booked with Jet2 for August 2020 - we also paid £60.00 per person deposit (that is Jet2's standard deposit - at least for countries such as Greece).

As the time to pay the balance got closer, we too had a disinclination to travel.

So we cancelled our holiday and walked away from the £120 we paid.

Your situation is identical to ours.

And to this statement from MSE

You can leave your area, and your destination will let you in, but you simply don't want to travel. You're unlikely to get your money back as the provider is still offering the service you booked, unless you have a flexible flight and/or flexible or cancellable hotel booking.

and

If your flight or holiday is still running and you have travel insurance, it might cover you for overseas trips where it's illegal for you to travel – but only if your policy covers coronavirus cancellation. This will usually only be the case if you took out the insurance and booked the trip before mid-March 2020, but check. If the trip or hotel was booked later, travel insurance is very unlikely to help you.

The same goes for those who simply change their mind – travel insurance won't cover this scenario regardless of when you took out the policy or booked the trip. See more in I've bought travel insurance – am I covered? below.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/02/coronavirus-travel-help-and-your-rights/?_ga=2.174063395.1456196526.1627468806-109914455.1627468806#booked

You mention difficulty in contacting Jet2.

How did you book?

We booked online and simply cancelled through our booking.

born_again

Why not just amend the holiday?


https://www.jet2.com/en/flights/cancellations

pattycake

We were in a similar position with Tui last year.  In our case, the holiday was booked before anyone had heard of covid.  We chose to cancel and accepted that the deposit was forfeit.  The amount lost was £400 so a lot more than your deposit.  But it was our decision to cancel so we didn’t whinge about it afterwards!