Who do I contact, carrier or site I booked with?

MAW367

Morning all. 

Nightmare trip to France. 

85 year old father with disabilities. 

78 year old mother, me 60, wife 57.
booked flight through lastminute.com 

Issue 1

Arrived at BA desk for 9:30am flight Newcastle > Heathrow 
advised our connecting flight Heathrow > Toulouse had been changed to 7:30am - yes, not a typo. The connection flight was 2 hours before we took off from our first flight. I wasn’t advised by anyone. 

Check in managed to get us on later flight, 8:40pm Heathrow > Toulouse. We had to sit at Heathrow for about 8 hours. 
Issue 2 
contacted Booking.com to advise we’d be late for hire car pickup. Person tried to contact Alamo, hire company. Couldn’t get in contact so they emailed company & CC’d me in (have email)
arrived around midnight, Alamo closed. 

Had to take taxi Toulouse > Saint Gaurdan. Cost €270

lot more to our expenditure, but I’ll not go in to it. 

Who do I try to get some sort of satisfaction off - lastminute.com or British Airways - all of the problems happened because of the flight change we weren’t informed of. 

Booking.com suggested I go back to Toulouse airport the following day, book another car, they would refund for two days less the one day when I couldn’t pick up.  

I’ve a text from lastminute.com that welcomed me to Toulouse at around 11:30am - they obviously knew the flight had been changed. 

I paid for flights on credit card, car by bank account 

Anyone suggest my best recourse? 

daveyjp

1. Changes to flight times: the flight time displayed on your ticket may change between the date of your booking and the date of travel, for example due to rescheduling or other incidents. It is your responsibility to check the airline’s website for any chance to the flight time before you travel.

Lastminute.com very small print.

bagand96

BA should have informed LM of the schedule change and then LM should have informed you so that you could look at options.  

It's reasonable to assume that BA did inform LM but something then fell down and you didn't get notification. At the moment that is an assumption but you wouldn't be the first especially with the agent concerned - and as you say the SMS welcoming you to Toulouse suggests their IT knew about it at least.  I'd try and get confirmation from BA of when the schedule change took place and that they did inform LM.  After that you can raise a complaint with LM to try and cover your out of pocket expenses.  I'll be honest I'm not sure how much luck you'll have with LM, they don't have the best reputation for customer care.

No help now but if you book direct with airlines then they will contact you directly taking the middle man out of the process.  If you do book with an agent then it's always worth periodically logging onto your booking on the airline website to check all is ok.

MAW367

daveyjp said:

1. Changes to flight times: the flight time displayed on your ticket may change between the date of your booking and the date of travel, for example due to rescheduling or other incidents. It is your responsibility to check the airline’s website for any chance to the flight time before you travel.

Lastminute.com very small print.

We did and nothing had charged. 

Remember, our first flight was Newcastle > Heathrow at 9:30am. 

The connection flight, 2nd flight, i.e. Heathrow > Toulouse, had been changed to 2 hours BEFORE our first flight left

Baled

Did you check both flight times on the airlines (BA for both flights?) website or on the last minute website?

Awful start to your family holiday and I hope you can get some kind of resolution.

tightauldgit

Provided BA have done their part and informed lastminute then I think any claim will be against lastminute but the problem is going to be getting them to take any notice of you I imagine.