Advice sought re: FlightCatchers.com

Katyevans292

I am wondering whether anyone could help me with the below.

I lost my grandfather late last year and he left some money to my partner and I to go to Thailand with some family.

On 28th June my partner went onto FlightCatchers.com to book flights to Thailand. He attempted to book but received an email saying the booking was unsuccessful and instruction from them to attempt to rebook. This failure in payment has raised our concern regarding this website so we moved over to booking.com and booked our flights through them instead.

We have then noticed that Flightcatchers had taken the £5417.46 from my partners account even though they emailed to tell him the booking was unsuccessful. 

 We have spoken on the phone with Flightcatchers customer service representatives relentlessly who were very difficult and made us feel extremely uncomfortable, and were ultimately unwilling to help, blaming the situation on my partner in an aggressive manner! 

They have refused to refund us in full and required £385.00 per person.

This has cost us £1925 of our own money which we did not have as spare money to spend on a holiday, and has completely ruined the wonderful generous gift from my Grandfather.

marcia_

 I would have asked my bank for a chargeback. I don't know if that would be an option on a partial payment as in your case. 

 Unless the transaction was on a credit card? 

eskbanker

On what specific basis were they seeking £385pp?

If they confirmed in writing that the booking wasn't made then it may be viable to use chargeback to recover the money from the bank, assuming it was a credit or debit card payment?

Westin

Katyevans292 said:

I am wondering whether anyone could help me with the below.

I lost my grandfather late last year and he left some money to my partner and I to go to Thailand with some family.

On 28th June my partner went onto FlightCatchers.com to book flights to Thailand. He attempted to book but received an email saying the booking was unsuccessful and instruction from them to attempt to rebook. This failure in payment has raised our concern regarding this website so we moved over to booking.com and booked our flights through them instead.

We have then noticed that Flightcatchers had taken the £5417.46 from my partners account even though they emailed to tell him the booking was unsuccessful. 

 We have spoken on the phone with Flightcatchers customer service representatives relentlessly who were very difficult and made us feel extremely uncomfortable, and were ultimately unwilling to help, blaming the situation on my partner in an aggressive manner! 

They have refused to refund us in full and required £385.00 per person.

This has cost us £1925 of our own money which we did not have as spare money to spend on a holiday, and has completely ruined the wonderful generous gift from my Grandfather.

What did the email say? Was there an instruction to call them to verify the credit card or supply some type of ID check?  Could the booking have been pending payment verification rather than ‘unsuccesful’?

Voyager2002

As others have said, contact the bank or company who provided the card you used for payment. The email from this travel agency gave you good reason to believe that they had not provided the flights that you sought to book and so you acted intelligently when you bought elsewhere. They have no basis to seek to charge you the cancellation fee.