Booking.com ignoring full refund

MissRP95

How can I contact booking.com about money owed to me? When I call them I speak to an agent and they aren't able to do anything. They say we cannot speak to a manager, only email them and when we email them, we don't get a response.

We booked a package holiday with them and decided to cancel the hotel, which had free cancellation and keep the flight. They refunded us some of the money and said the rest was with the flight operator. We spoke to the flight operator who said told us the cost of the flight, so we calculated the cost of the flight and the money refunded to us, including the £70 Admin fee we had to pay and we are missing over £300. Booking.com said its the flight provider that owe that money and we asked them to prove it by providing us with a breakdown of what we paid for our package holiday and the agent said he couldn't, he needed to request it from another department and we would be sent an email in 3 days. We didn't. We rang again, requested another breakdown, waited another 3 days and still nothing. Repeated this 2 more times, should have recieved 4 breakdown emails by now.

Sent a formal final demand to their email address, no reply in 2 weeks. 

How can I speak with someone with authority to get my money back? 

eskbanker

MissRP95 said:

We booked a package holiday with them and decided to cancel the hotel, which had free cancellation and keep the flight. They refunded us some of the money and said the rest was with the flight operator. We spoke to the flight operator who said told us the cost of the flight, so we calculated the cost of the flight and the money refunded to us, including the £70 Admin fee we had to pay and we are missing over £300. Booking.com said its the flight provider that owe that money...

I don't understand this - surely even if they allowed you to split up a package booking, any money owed to you would be from the provider of the cancelled service, i.e. the hotel in this case, so why would the airline be due to refund anything?  I'd be sceptical about trying to reverse engineer the costs by taking figures from the airline - even if their front-line staff knew what they'd been paid by booking.com, that doesn't necessarily correspond to the cost charged to you, and flight costs for a standalone booking may not be the same as those applying as part of a package.

No harm in continuing to pursue booking.com to get the breakdown, but I'd be very wary of any assumption that you know the right figure at this stage!

elsien

Didn’t your invoice show the cost of the hotel? Fairly sure when I booked with them the booking shows the separate costs of each. Although I did choose the airline and the hotel separately so maybe that makes a difference, even if they were booked as a package.
Did you buy one of the ready-made packages where it was the total cost for everything?

MissRP95

eskbanker said:

I don't understand this - surely even if they allowed you to split up a package booking, any money owed to you would be from the provider of the cancelled service, i.e. the hotel in this case, so why would the airline be due to refund anything?  I'd be sceptical about trying to reverse engineer the costs by taking figures from the airline - even if their front-line staff knew what they'd been paid by booking.com, that doesn't necessarily correspond to the cost charged to you, and flight costs for a standalone booking may not be the same as those applying as part of a package.

No harm in continuing to pursue booking.com to get the breakdown, but I'd be very wary of any assumption that you know the right figure at this stage!

That's what we told the agent, why do we need to go to the flight operator when we booked it through you. They are insisting that they owe us the money. I really don't know how to proceed, we keep asking for this breakdown but they aren't sending it, they keep saying they need to request it from another department and they will email us and to wait 3 days, but nothing happens.

elsien said:

Didn’t your invoice show the cost of the hotel? Fairly sure when I booked with them the booking shows the separate costs of each. Although I did choose the airline and the hotel separately so maybe that makes a difference, even if they were booked as a package.
Did you buy one of the ready-made packages where it was the total cost for everything?

No, the confirmation email shows us everything included but only the total cost of the package unfortunately. 

If they really did believe the flight operator owed us the money they would be happy to give us the breakdown, I feel like they know they owe us the money so they aren't providing it to us. 

elsien

Why would the flight operator owe you money when you haven’t cancelled the flight? That’s the bit I’m confused by.

Manxman_in_exile

If your package holiday is made up of two parts consisting of (1) flights and (2) accommodation, can you cancel just one part and keep the other?

Assuming you can, if you were keeping the flights I'd expect them to cost more on their own than they did as part of the "package"...

eskbanker

Are you sure that you still have a live booking with the airline?  It's beginning to sound like booking.com have cancelled the whole package, which is probably what I'd expect to be honest, rather than simply removing the accommodation component of a package....

tightauldgit

I just had a look at booking.com as I have never booked their packages only ever made separate hotel and flight bookings. 

It looks to me as if the 'free hotel cancellation' means when you cancel the whole package booking you get your hotel portion refunded. It doesn't appear to say you can just cancel the hotel portion and keep the flight. 

Is it possible they've cancelled your package and then rebooked you on the flight at additional cost?

born_again

MissRP95 said:

How can I contact booking.com about money owed to me? When I call them I speak to an agent and they aren't able to do anything. They say we cannot speak to a manager, only email them and when we email them, we don't get a response.

We booked a package holiday with them and decided to cancel the hotel, which had free cancellation and keep the flight. They refunded us some of the money and said the rest was with the flight operator. We spoke to the flight operator who said told us the cost of the flight, so we calculated the cost of the flight and the money refunded to us, including the £70 Admin fee we had to pay and we are missing over £300. Booking.com said its the flight provider that owe that money and we asked them to prove it by providing us with a breakdown of what we paid for our package holiday and the agent said he couldn't, he needed to request it from another department and we would be sent an email in 3 days. We didn't. We rang again, requested another breakdown, waited another 3 days and still nothing. Repeated this 2 more times, should have recieved 4 breakdown emails by now.

Sent a formal final demand to their email address, no reply in 2 weeks. 

How can I speak with someone with authority to get my money back? 

Does the Hotel T/C allow this?
Booking.com advertise free cancelations, but in the small print this is subject to hotel etc supporting this. many do not.

But like others, if there is no breakdown of costs, then it sounds like the whole holiday has been cancelled.

HillStreetBlues

Who took payment?  was booking.com on the statement?

MissRP95

elsien said:

Why would the flight operator owe you money when you haven’t cancelled the flight? That’s the bit I’m confused by.

Because we haven't got the breakdown we are using the knowledge we have to estimate how much we are owed. They are saying that the money we've calculated around £300 isn't owed by them, that the flight must cost more than they are saying. They are just trying to push responsibility away from themselves. 

Manxman_in_exile said:
If your package holiday is made up of two parts consisting of (1) flights and (2) accommodation, can you cancel just one part and keep the other?

Assuming you can, if you were keeping the flights I'd expect them to cost more on their own than they did as part of the "package"...

The package was booked through booking.com but when it comes to the flight they are just acting like a middle man, so they've allowed us to cancel the hotel but keep the flight as really they have nothing to do with the flight. They've just linked it as a package on their website.

eskbanker said:
Are you sure that you still have a live booking with the airline?  It's beginning to sound like booking.com have cancelled the whole package, which is probably what I'd expect to be honest, rather than simply removing the accommodation component of a package....

Yes, we spoke to the airline today and they said we still have the flight.

tightauldgit said:
I just had a look at booking.com as I have never booked their packages only ever made separate hotel and flight bookings. 

It looks to me as if the 'free hotel cancellation' means when you cancel the whole package booking you get your hotel portion refunded. It doesn't appear to say you can just cancel the hotel portion and keep the flight. 

Is it possible they've cancelled your package and then rebooked you on the flight at additional cost?

The way it seems is the hotel was like a regular hotel booking with themselves and the flight is like when you use skyscanner. They are just the middle men that making the booking on your behalf and then link it to your hotel and then give you the options of adding luggage and transfers. I wouldn't call it a proper package holiday like if you were to book it through Jet2 or TUI.

born_again said:
Does the Hotel T/C allow this?
Booking.com advertise free cancelations, but in the small print this is subject to hotel etc supporting this. many do not.

But like others, if there is no breakdown of costs, then it sounds like the whole holiday has been cancelled.

Yes we spoke to them on the phone before cancelling and the said we could cancel the hotel and get all the money back except pay a £35pp admin fee. They said they couldn't refund us for the flight and that we would need to go directly to the airline to ask about a refund. We didn't want to cancel the flight anyway, just the hotel as we saw some bad reviews that really put us off the hotel. 

HillStreetBlues said:
Who took payment?  was booking.com on the statement?

Technically Lastminute.com as they own booking.com. Talking to either company is a difficult task.