TAP Portugal - changed our departure flight with no notice?

notpropaganda73

Hi - just looking for general tips on how to deal with this. Time is a bit of the essence here as it's Christmas flights! 

My girlfriend is from Madrid and we are going to her family for Christmas. We booked the flights a long time ago due to getting a deal with TAP, Dublin-Lisbon-Madrid, departing next Thursday 22nd December and returning 29th December. (We live in Belfast and Dublin airport is only 1.5hours down the road). 

Just yesterday we got an email from TAP with the usual "here's your trip details!", but then today my partner gets an e-mail saying "Due to your contact with TAP resulting in the xxxxxxxx case, you have received a TAP voucher of 800 EUR to travel on our airline".

We weren't notified of any flight cancellation or change AT ALL and after getting this email, we checked the booking to find our departure flight has been changed. We're now departing Dublin 12 hours later than originally scheduled, arriving in Madrid 10 hours later (shorter layover in Lisbon). But we've lost the entire day of the 22nd, and it's Christmas - this new flight time means we won't see my girlfriend's sister who is leaving the night of the 22nd to her partner for Christmas, and we are also missing a birthday party...

Anyway regardless of personal details, I'm right in thinking TAP are supposed to have gotten in touch before this change? And we are due a refund if we want it? We are looking at rebooking with Ryanair (pricier but again, it's Christmas and we want to be assured of the flight) but I have seen some advice saying that TAP should handle all of that if that's the route we want to go down? 

At this point we are just wanting nothing to do with TAP, even with that 800 euro voucher, it's useless to us right now because we want to get to Madrid early afternoon on the 22nd, and neither of us can leave on the 21st due to work commitments. 

Wonka_2

Out of interest did you book direct with them or via an intermediary ?

notpropaganda73

Wonka_2 said:

Out of interest did you book direct with them or via an intermediary ?

Direct with them 

eskbanker

notpropaganda73 said:

Just yesterday we got an email from TAP with the usual "here's your trip details!", but then today my partner gets an e-mail saying "Due to your contact with TAP resulting in the xxxxxxxx case, you have received a TAP voucher of 800 EUR to travel on our airline".

It's unclear (to me) from that whether this is anything to do with the current booking or a previous one?

notpropaganda73 said:

We weren't notified of any flight cancellation or change AT ALL and after getting this email, we checked the booking to find our departure flight has been changed. We're now departing Dublin 12 hours later than originally scheduled, arriving in Madrid 10 hours later (shorter layover in Lisbon).

Have they cancelled the original flight or just unilaterally rebooked you onto another one?

notpropaganda73

eskbanker said:

notpropaganda73 said:

Just yesterday we got an email from TAP with the usual "here's your trip details!", but then today my partner gets an e-mail saying "Due to your contact with TAP resulting in the xxxxxxxx case, you have received a TAP voucher of 800 EUR to travel on our airline".

It's unclear (to me) from that whether this is anything to do with the current booking or a previous one?

notpropaganda73 said:

We weren't notified of any flight cancellation or change AT ALL and after getting this email, we checked the booking to find our departure flight has been changed. We're now departing Dublin 12 hours later than originally scheduled, arriving in Madrid 10 hours later (shorter layover in Lisbon).

Have they cancelled the original flight or just unilaterally rebooked you onto another one?

Apologies, regarding the first quote re: trip details, that was to do with the original booking. It since turns out they had notified my partner but it had gone to spam. The dangers of getting annoyed while she is stuck in surgery (EDIT - I should clarify, she's a vet and was going in to do a spay - not brain surgery!) sporadically checking her phone and me not having access to her emails (rightly so from a privacy POV!). We just both pure panicked because of the Christmas flight nature of it all! 

It was an overbooking it turns out, the original notification (that went to her spam folder) said we were being moved to a different flight because of the overbooking and that we would receive a separate voucher email. 

We are going through the refund process now and TAP air advised us that they couldn't rebook us with a different airline, honestly as long as get the refund we are ok with paying a little more to Ryanair, it actually has only worked out about £100 more and that's without any layovers amazingly enough (those flights were a lot more expensive a few months back). 

I will be following up on the refund side of things obviously but the big relief is we've a flight secured