Compensation for delay in confirming flight availability

Alexkelly

Wonder if anyone has experienced this before and can help:

I booked a return flight on Thursday 12th May (Liverpool- Paris/ 27-29th May). Direct flights, ryanair, outbound at 10:30, return 13:15. Cost was £490 but knew it would be pricey due to it being for the Champions league final. Booked it on trip.com

Paid instantly and had email confirmation stating so. Also got email from ryanair with confirmation of outbound flight and reservation number. None for return flight.

Had an email early hours of Fri 13th May from trip.com saying availability for my return flight was low so would I be willing to move to a similar time flight but on the day before (28th). Obviously I declined this explaining I was going for the final which was 9pm on 28th. I received another email saying I had misunderstood and that they were telling me my flight was no longer available so I called them right away (trip.com)

They said my flight appeared to be overbooked but they didn't sound sure of that. Then they offered me another flight instead (returning 8.40pm on 29th). I said no as I had paid £490 for a flight that got me home for the parade next day (4pm), so I said I would be willing to go on another flight and gave them the details (paris>liverpool 12:30) which had plenty of availability. They thanked me for the alternative offer and said they would look into it and get back to me...

Over the course of the next 5/6days I was constantly emailing and ringing them to get a response but they just kept saying they were checking on things. One thing they were checking on was whether or not I could actually still go on my original return.

I was nervous all week, knowing that return flights on 29th were either selling out or prices rocketing, but they constantly assured me they were sorting it. Every time I called they said I would hear from them by a certain time and every time, nothing happened so I had to keep chasing it up myself.

Finally yesterday (8 days after making my booking and 7 days before the trip) they emailed to say my return flight was unavailable and I would need to cancel it to get a refund.

I was obviously furious and called them, had to wait over an hour to speak to a supervisor who had no answer as to why it had taken so long to confirm this and no answer as to why they never got me on my alternate suggested fight (now sold out). I told him I wouldn't just accept the fact I needed to get a refund for my return flight as this wouldn't get near covering a new booking (the only return direct flights at a similar time was now £760!) and after refusing to give up he agreed that if I bought the new flight myself and sent them the receipt, trip.com would validate it and cover the cost. I explained I would need him to send me this in writing and waited on the line until this email came through...

When it did, it said they would do this BUT it said they would need to do an investigation to check any failings on their part before agreeing to cover the cost of the new ticket. I couldnt' get any 100% guarantee so I decided to do this as my other options weren't great either.

SO - I've now forked out another £760 (on credit card) for this flight and forwarded the receipt to trip.com. They said the investigation would take about a week and I'm pretty nervous they're going to find a reason not to pay it...

Anyone know what I can expect here? If they had told me straight away that my return flight was unavailable I could've booked another route for the same price but the 8 day delay caused me to no longer have any other options at the same price, and as I was chasing it up every day it's not like they weren't constantly reminded of the situation - but I wouldn't be shocked if they find a loophole here.

Any advice greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance.

Upsidedownandaround

Good luck but I would expect you will get nothing. These online tickets floggers don’t have access to live flight availability and prices.

When you purchase from them their terms and conditions will make it clear you are only making a booking request. They then go away and see if the they can get the flight for the price from the airline. If the flight is higher priced or no longer available they then come back to you.

This is the downside of using such third parties and why it is always better to book direct with the airline.

eDicky

Alexkelly said:

Booked it on trip.com

Any particular reason you didn't book directly with Ryanair..?

Sorry but I don't fancy your chances of getting anything out of trip.com

bagand96

This is the problem using Online Travel Agents and low cost airlines.  When you make a booking with them, you are actually submitting a "booking request".  They then go and book the flight with Ryanair just like you would directly.  They use screen-scraper software to do this in near-real time, and most of the time it works.  However it can cause problems because it isn't actually live.  I suspect that what happened here is the Ryanair price had increased due to the high demand, therefore Trip.com's IT didn't book it because it's not the price you agreed to.

This will be covered in Trip.com's T&Cs.  Whilst you might get lucky and they'll agree to cover your costs, they probably don't have to, so I share the same fear as the posters above that you might not get what you're hoping for.  Could all have been avoided by booking direct with Ryanair.

eDicky said:

Alexkelly said:

Booked it on trip.com

Any particular reason you didn't book directly with Ryanair..?

I wonder if trip.com were coming up cheapest on a comparison site like Kayak/Skyscanner because they were showing a price that wasn't live, and as the OP learned, not available.

Alexkelly

I just booked it on trip.com as I’ve used it before and never had any problems. 

I understand why it didn’t work. What I don’t understand is why it took them 8 days to verify my flight was unavailable. 

The supervisor did tell me they would cover the cost if I booked the new flight so I don’t think it’s as unlikely as others have said but I agree there’s a chance it mightn’t happen.

Will pursue it relentlessly either way

bagand96

Alexkelly said:

I just booked it on trip.com as I’ve used it before and never had any problems. 

I understand why it didn’t work. What I don’t understand is why it took them 8 days to verify my flight was unavailable. 

The supervisor did tell me they would cover the cost if I booked the new flight so I don’t think it’s as unlikely as others have said but I agree there’s a chance it mightn’t happen.

Will pursue it relentlessly either way

The reason it took 8 days is probably that OTA's make tiny tiny margins, its just the volume of transactions that means they make any money at all.  (to be honest I'm not sure how they make any money at all on a Ryanair booking, because they certainly get no commission from Ryanair!)  So there probably isn't an entire call centre of staff sat around ready to resolve issues.  It will be the absolute bare minimum.  Like so many companies, fine when everything goes ok and you don't need their help, but the moment you need human interaction it all falls apart.

Good luck though, do update us how you get on!

Upsidedownandaround

Alexkelly said:

I just booked it on trip.com as I’ve used it before and never had any problems. 

I understand why it didn’t work. What I don’t understand is why it took them 8 days to verify my flight was unavailable. 

The supervisor did tell me they would cover the cost if I booked the new flight so I don’t think it’s as unlikely as others have said but I agree there’s a chance it mightn’t happen.

Will pursue it relentlessly either way

Best of luck but if trip.com and similar OTA's handed out compensation for poor service or held themselves liable for increases in flight prices when their screen scraper technology was not up to date  they would have ceased to exist a number of years ago.

If you do a search on here or other travel forums like Tripadvisor you will see the problems people have experienced even when Trip.com were liable for refunds never mind compensation for bad service.

Thrugelmir

If you found an alternate flight yourself why didn’t you book it yourself?  Rather than mess around for days. Would be no need to seek compensation either.

Alexkelly

Thrugelmir said:

If you found an alternate flight yourself why didn’t you book it yourself?  Rather than mess around for days. Would be no need to seek compensation either.

Because the prices of all these flights shot up
within hours due to how many people were booking them after getting final tickets and trip.com told me to wait as they said they’d let me know within the next 12 hours whether or not my original booking was available. So I wasn’t going to pay £500 (which was the price of this flight after they first messaged me saying my flight might not be available - compared to half that when I booked mine) when i thought my flight May still stand

Alexkelly

My issue with trip.com here is that instead of telling me my flight was definitely unavailable right away, they were unsure and I had to call them every day (some days more than once) for the next week. The difference in prices of flights during that time changed that much it was the difference between being able to afford to go and not being able to afford it. So it’s not as simple as just booking another flight. 

Even the next day when they first said my flight may be unavailable, the prices had gone up so much that I’d struggle to pay that much more.

For context:

booked for £490
day after, would’ve been about £700
then went up about £50 a day so it was about £1000 8 days later.

Being stuck in limbo while they told me to rest assured for those 8 days is what has screwed me over here. Which is why I demanded they cover this price difference - which they agreed to over the phone. Then the email’s wording was a bit different to what the supervisor had told me…

onashoestring

In the situation you describe, their only responsibility under their T&Cs and the law is that they must refund you . No additional compensation is due .