Administration Fees for getting a refund from a cancelled flight from an agent?

MercilessKiller

Thrugelmir said:

MercilessKiller said:

eskbanker said:

https://uk.mytrip.com/rf/travel-conditions#APPENDICES_FEES (a link in your earlier Ts & Cs extract) clearly states that they charge a fee when the airline cancels:

Refund Handling Fee For all refunds requested by You, including requests for refund of ticket amount, taxes, fees and/or charges from the airline. The fee applies also for our administrative work in case of an airline cancellation.

55 GBP per traveler Refund following airline cancellation: 30 GBP per booking

I'm just very surprised customers can be left out of pocket in this type of situation.

Should the business be out of pocket?  Their overheads need to be covered. Staff certainly don't work for free. You had the option to book direct. 

This is a weird take on it for a few reasons:
1) Direct cost more thus using the agent in this case
2) There were options unavailable with direct that were through the agent
3) There are no staff involved (or shouldn't be!). The money is being sent back by Wizzair to Mytravel and the whole process can very easily be completely automated. And in fact should be...

To make it clearer why your take on this is so weird, lets compare it to a recall of a product with retail. Let's say you go buy a TV from Tesco for £1k. Then Samsung do a recall on the TV due to safety issues and you can take it back to Tesco for a refund as Samsung are also refunding Tesco for the cost of the TV - In that situation, would you be happy paying Tesco £50 or so to "process the recall" because you COULD have bought the TV direct from the Samsung store?

The whole process of booking the flight is automated without staff involvement so I have no idea what overheads/costs you're referring to when the flight doesn't actually happen.

sheramber

Who pays the person who answered your phone call, the person who set up the bank account and the autimatic payment system?

Somebody had to pay for the website.

Somebody was paid to research the flights available and give you options that that you could not buy direct.

Who do you think did all that?

You bought a service that  had to be provided by somebody. 

bagand96

MercilessKiller said:

This is a weird take on it for a few reasons:
1) Direct cost more thus using the agent in this case

And there we have it.... using the agent saved you a few bob which is fair enough.  These bargain basement online agents make their money back on admin fees for the small % of customers that need assistance later on.

Whilst the booking process is automated, it's likely that there will be some sort of manual process for a refund.    I'm also slightly perplexed how an online agent can sell Wizzair tickets cheaper than Wizzair themselves, unless it was a loss leader.  Wizzair are a lowcost like Ryanair, they don't have complex fare structures like network airlines.

MercilessKiller said:

To make it clearer why your take on this is so weird, lets compare it to a recall of a product with retail. Let's say you go buy a TV from Tesco for £1k. Then Samsung do a recall on the TV due to safety issues and you can take it back to Tesco for a refund as Samsung are also refunding Tesco for the cost of the TV - In that situation, would you be happy paying Tesco £50 or so to "process the recall" because you COULD have bought the TV direct from the Samsung store?

If Tesco notified you of that £50 charge at the point of sale then it would be perfectly legit.  You'd have the choice of using Tesco or not.  Unfortunately you accepted the T&Cs when choosing this agent. 

The only final thing is that UK consumer law does state that contract terms should be fair.  If you're not happy with the term you could raise a challenge that it's an unfair term - not sure how you'd go about that though, perhaps a Small Claims Court case for the admin fee.

Thrugelmir

MercilessKiller said:

Thrugelmir said:

MercilessKiller said:

eskbanker said:

https://uk.mytrip.com/rf/travel-conditions#APPENDICES_FEES (a link in your earlier Ts & Cs extract) clearly states that they charge a fee when the airline cancels:

Refund Handling Fee For all refunds requested by You, including requests for refund of ticket amount, taxes, fees and/or charges from the airline. The fee applies also for our administrative work in case of an airline cancellation.

55 GBP per traveler Refund following airline cancellation: 30 GBP per booking

I'm just very surprised customers can be left out of pocket in this type of situation.

Should the business be out of pocket?  Their overheads need to be covered. Staff certainly don't work for free. You had the option to book direct. 

The whole process of booking the flight is automated without staff involvement so I have no idea what overheads/costs you're referring to when the flight doesn't actually happen.

Refunds are far from automatic. Very much a manual process. 

Butts

I had a chargeback against Brtitish Airways booked through Last Minute.com.

The full amount was returned to my card despite LM.Coms notoriety for "add ons" 

They tried to challenge it but the evidence they provided was insufficient for Capital One to be swayed.

When promoting the right of OTA's to claim fees for their services it must be balanced by the manner in which some of them have flouted the law and treated customers appallingly trying to evade their Legal responsibilities.

Do they really deserve a fee in these circumstances ?

bagand96

Butts said:

I had a chargeback against Brtitish Airways booked through Last Minute.com.

The full amount was returned to my card despite LM.Coms notoriety for "add ons" 

They tried to challenge it but the evidence they provided was insufficient for Capital One to be swayed.

When promoting the right of OTA's to claim fees for their services it must be balanced by the manner in which some of them have flouted the law and treated customers appallingly trying to evade their Legal responsibilities.

Do they really deserve a fee in these circumstances ?

I'm not sure anyone is promoting the right for OTA's to charge fees as such.  Just pointing out that a contract was entered into and and the terms were agreed to.

We have no evidence that the agent in this instance has treated the OP appallingly or tried to evade their legal responsibilities.

Butts

bagand96 said:

Butts said:

I had a chargeback against Brtitish Airways booked through Last Minute.com.

The full amount was returned to my card despite LM.Coms notoriety for "add ons" 

They tried to challenge it but the evidence they provided was insufficient for Capital One to be swayed.

When promoting the right of OTA's to claim fees for their services it must be balanced by the manner in which some of them have flouted the law and treated customers appallingly trying to evade their Legal responsibilities.

Do they really deserve a fee in these circumstances ?

I'm not sure anyone is promoting the right for OTA's to charge fees as such.  Just pointing out that a contract was entered into and and the terms were agreed to.

We have no evidence that the agent in this instance has treated the OP appallingly or tried to evade their legal responsibilities.

I notice the OP booked in July with a Budget Airline using a third party, one does wonder why and perhaps on reflection caveat emptor is applicable in this case.

There was plenty of evidence out there regarding My Trip and their fellow OTA's performance during the pandemic.

MercilessKiller

Butts said:

bagand96 said:

Butts said:

I had a chargeback against Brtitish Airways booked through Last Minute.com.

The full amount was returned to my card despite LM.Coms notoriety for "add ons" 

They tried to challenge it but the evidence they provided was insufficient for Capital One to be swayed.

When promoting the right of OTA's to claim fees for their services it must be balanced by the manner in which some of them have flouted the law and treated customers appallingly trying to evade their Legal responsibilities.

Do they really deserve a fee in these circumstances ?

I'm not sure anyone is promoting the right for OTA's to charge fees as such.  Just pointing out that a contract was entered into and and the terms were agreed to.

We have no evidence that the agent in this instance has treated the OP appallingly or tried to evade their legal responsibilities.

I notice the OP booked in July with a Budget Airline using a third party, one does wonder why and perhaps on reflection caveat emptor is applicable in this case.

There was plenty of evidence out there regarding My Trip and their fellow OTA's performance during the pandemic.

Just to answer this point:
1) It was cheaper (marginally but at the time I had absolutely 0 idea that booking via an agent would provide pain but lesson learnt here! Re the evidence on MyTrip, I hadn't seen this annoyingly)
2) There were options available via MyTrip that weren't available direct. With the Wizzair site for this particular flight, some of the addson were only applicable to all people on the flight (including 4 year old son) where'as with agent, you could choose for specific people (i.e luggage)

Now, the "on reflection" point is valid - knowing what I now know, that an agent can charge a fee even when the flight doesn't happen, I would have found an alternative option for sure. I'd argue it's not actually clear re the charges when the airline cancels the flight - In fact, there's nothing in the T&C's itself to say that, but only in the appendix which is labelled as the fee guide, not the rules on when fee's are applied. The wording in the T&C's seem to reflect that the fees are charged if you want to make a change or cancel which is totally fair and acceptable. 

Going back to this specific example, WizzAir agreed with me to refund the agents card on my behalf without the agent having to speak to them at all. This is important because MyTrip's argument is that the cost relates to chasing the airline for the money for a cancelled flight (also understandable) - Thus when I've found a solution which requires ZERO comms between MyTrip and Wizzair, now that argument is invalid. 

Either way, I've submitted the chargeback claim and Amex have credited my account whilst the dispute gets investigated (November 23rd is the ETA on it).. I'll report back either way.

With regards to entering into a contract - There is no contract here as the service purchased does not exist and is not available. Thus contract is surely void. Unless it was me choosing to cancel of course. My question here relates to the law specifically and if I've paid for a service not received (in this case a flight), then the consumer most likely shouldn't be liable for costs and if anything, MyTrip's argument of being out of pocket is surely something they should then be taking up with WizzAir due to the man power from MyTrip's side related to offering/advertising the flight being wasted due to the flight then being cancelled. 

CKhalvashi

MercilessKiller said:

Deleted_User said:

It's correct that they charge you the fee, as long as it's outlined in their terms, as they have carried out the work in buying the tickets for you and now refunding. So if you're smelling fish, it must be coming from somewhere else.

If you had booked directly, you would have received a full refund.

Maybe I'm being silly but reading their terms & conditions, I'm not requesting a change here. The cancellation has happened, WizzAir are processing the refund without me requesting it from MyTrip -- My Trip are refusing to pass on the refund to me unless I pay them this administration fee. From WizzAir's point of view, they said they'd never heard of this and it shouldn't happen..

But you didn't book with Wizz and aren't their customer, you booked with MyTrip and MyTrip are their customer.

If you'd booked with Wizz directly, you'd have had the option of 120% credit, refund or re-booking without paying a third party for the privilege. You gave up many legal rights when not booking with the airline and should only do this in future when not booking a package.

From experience dealing with Wizz cancellations last summer and their changing of the Lviv route in January from twice weekly to once weekly (travelling for work) and changing the dates completely, they're a good airline if you can deal with them directly.

Thrugelmir

A contract most certainly does exist. The terms and conditions of which are there to cover eventualities. The commercial law solicitors who drafted it most certainly knew what they were doing.