Travel agent has issued us county court case over refunded flights

NJ69x

Hi guys I had a reply back from Gulf Air today for the query I raised last week about this situation:

We have noted your comments in regard to your experience from London Heathrow to Delhi via Bahrian XXth February with return from Delhi to London Heathrow via Bahrian XXth April. Unfortunately, flights GF0XXX and GFXXX from Delhi to Bahrain were cancelled due to COVID-19 Pandemic. We have advised and offered our valued passenger to either get full refund of their unused sectors by contacting the issuing agency or to make it as open ticket valid for 18 months by contacting one of our offices or our worldwide contact centre. Unfortunately, we are unable to entertain your request with refund due to Time Barred and your travel agent could not refund the tickets due to time barred.

On behalf of Gulf Air, once again, we regret any unintentional inconvenience encountered and we look forward to welcoming you and your wife onboard our flights in the not too distant future. 

They are claiming that they advised and offered a refund but that's not true. They fobbed my parents off to the travel agent and the travel agent kept telling us to take the refund issue up with the airline directly.

Caz3121

It is usual that airlines will not deal with the passengers when the tickets have been booked through an agent.
the complaint would be with the agent who held the relationship with the airline. The agent would have needed to request the refund of the unused portion and Gulf Air would have issued the refund to the agent. who would then have passed it on to the passengers less any admin fee.
I expect at the time they would have been inundated (and probably understaffed for the workload) so fobbed people off
The best approach may be to counter that your parents should have received a portion of the flight costs back for the unused portion (possibly about 25-33% when accounting for majority of taxes being on the ex-UK part) so whilst it was clearly wrong that they received 100% back when the outbound flight had been used they could argue that they should not have to pay it all back as the agent failed in their duty to progress the refund process with the airline and they are the only ones that would have been able to do that.

HillStreetBlues

Caz3121 said:

It is usual that airlines will not deal with the passengers when the tickets have been booked through an agent.
the complaint would be with the agent who held the relationship with the airline. The agent would have needed to request the refund of the unused portion and Gulf Air would have issued the refund to the agent. who would then have passed it on to the passengers less any admin fee.
I expect at the time they would have been inundated (and probably understaffed for the workload) so fobbed people off
The best approach may be to counter that your parents should have received a portion of the flight costs back for the unused portion (possibly about 25-33% when accounting for majority of taxes being on the ex-UK part) so whilst it was clearly wrong that they received 100% back when the outbound flight had been used they could argue that they should not have to pay it all back as the agent failed in their duty to progress the refund process with the airline and they are the only ones that would have been able to do that.

The travel agent should have provided the return flight, that was their responsibility, but they passed the buck so OP had to sort out the flight home.
What should have happened is the OP claimed cost of new flight back from travel agent, not get a refund. A partial refund isn't in the OP's best interest, as that might end up making the total of flight more expensive (but still could go after TA  for consequential loss).

As the TA wants to reclaim the total costs of the flights, there is no harm in the TA winning on that count, as OP would win on the counter claim for cost of replacement flight.

Coupon-mad

Out of interest, on what basis is the refund 'time barred' after 3 years?

Westin

I don’t think the OP had named the ‘travel agent’. I however suspect this travel agent is not one of the established high-street type travel agents or home based agents who might have well helped their customer with alternatives or the refund process. Instead I suspect the ‘travel agent’ is an online ticket seller. Little or no ‘service’ post sale is provided - just a transactional sale and thats it.  

mdann52

Alan_Bowen said:

First, the good news, even if you lose the judge will not award costs against you in a small claims procedure.

Not strictly true - the judge can award fixed costs of around £100, but yes the costs award should be limited. Counter-claiming can risk this increasing, but unless the counter claim is without cause this is unlikely. Personally, I don't see how the travel agent for a flight-only booking would have any responsibility to cover accommodation due to a cancelled flight, so I would not counter claim for these costs. I also think that counter-claiming against the agent for the cost of the alternative flights is highly unlikely to be successful.

NJ69x

Hi guys I contacted Barclaycard to get clarification on what happened and what type of claim it was - they told me it was a chargeback and not a s75 claim. They explained they raised the claim and the TA never bothered to respond so after 30 days my dad automatically got the money credited back to his account.

We have until Monday to reply to the claim with our defence and/or counter claim. Currently the plan is to disagree with the TA claim in full and then raise a counter claim for £930 damages for the cost incurred in having to arrange alternative flights back to the UK. 

Is there anything I should be adding to the defence/counter claim that will help us?

GingerTim

Have you sought legal advice?

NJ69x

GingerTim said:

Have you sought legal advice?

The only legal advice i've sought is from the forum users here who I have no idea whether they are actual experts on travel law or if it's a case of the blind leading the blind.

I have now filed the counter claim so we will find out soon enough which of those is true 

NJ69x

For anyone interested this is what I wrote for the defence/counter claim:

I dispute the claimant's version of events. I booked two flights London-Delhi return from the claimant's website for myself and my wife travelling with Gulf Air. The travel dates were flying out  11/02/2020 and returning on 14/04/2020. 

After flying out to India when trying to fly to London the return flight was cancelled by Gulf Air and rescheduled for May 2020. Gulf Air then cancelled this May 2020 return flight and rescheduled it for 09/06/2020. After waiting nearly 2 months on 31/05/2020 Gulf Air again emailed us saying that this flight had also been cancelled.

During this time we had contacted the claimant for assistance in arranging an alternative return flight as we stranded overseas but they offered no help whatsoever. We then secured a one way return flight from Delhi to London with British Airways on 10/06/2020 for £930. 

Upon return we contacted the claimant to assist us with a refund but they offered no help and told us we needed to speak to Gulf Air. When we contacted Gulf Air they informed us that as the flight was booked with the claimant they could not assist us and we should contact the claimant.

I then raised a chargeback with my credit card provider on 20/06/2020. The claimant had 2 months to respond to the chargeback but they did not reply and I was refunded £890.34 back to my account on 29/08/2020.

Due to the claimant and airline failing in their duty to fly us back to London I had to arrange an alternative flight home with British Airways which cost £930 in total.