Refund for flight

Surfer01

Our 16yr old grandson holds a South African passport and to enter the EU he needs a visa.  To get the visa he needs to show proof of flights and accommodation.

His school are arranging a trip to Spain and he paid in full upfront for the trip and applied for a visa.  The school were aware that he had a foreign passport and probably also the travel agent.  However the school will not release the details of the flight to the organisation issuing the visa as they state that the manifesto has the names of the other children on it and due to data protection they cannot send this information to the visa people.  Catch 22.

They are now refusing to refund the money which means he is now out of pocket for over £700, the £200 spent applying for the visa and the also the cost of the trip to Manchester to apply for the visa.

As the school were aware that he needed a visa and they or their travel agent should have been aware that proof of flights etc would be required, surely the school/travel agent should be refunding the cost of the flight and perhaps also the cost of the the visa application?

Alan_Bowen

Surely the school and the travel agent can confirm the PNR and set out the flight details without producing the whole list of passenger names? It makes me wonder whether the flights have been booked at all so far. No paper tickets are issued anyay so I would have thought this should be sufficient for the visa.  

eskbanker

Sounds like this is basically a contractual issue between the responsible adult and the school or travel agent, but I'd have thought that the most pragmatic solution would be for them to redact the manifesto to mask the personal details of the other passengers, prior to submission to the visa organisation, aren't they prepared to do this?

Surfer01

We have a funny feeling that the travel agent could be a friend of a teacher at the school and the travel agent is working from home, but I may be completely wrong.  Either way they should have been aware of the visa issue.  The excuse by the school for no refund is that to get the discount they had to have a certain number of students for the 4 days. 

Apparently the parents were not even made aware of EHIC, travel insurance or anything.  Unfortunately we can only ask for the name of the travel agency tomorrow as all the documents are from the school.

I am not aware of how group tours are arranged to get a better discount, but as mentioned I cannot understand why they cannot confirm that the ticket has been bought and paid for as surely when boarding even as a group individual tickets are requested?

I am wondering if there is a way around this like booking another cheap flight to EU, showing this to the visa organisation and then cancelling for a refund even if there is a small admin fee?  Problem is that he is supposed to leave for the trip this coming Friday and has been excited about the trip.

eskbanker

Surfer01 said:

We have a funny feeling that the travel agent could be a friend of a teacher at the school and the travel agent is working from home, but I may be completely wrong.  Either way they should have been aware of the visa issue.  The excuse by the school for no refund is that to get the discount they had to have a certain number of students for the 4 days. 

Apparently the parents were not even made aware of EHIC, travel insurance or anything.  Unfortunately we can only ask for the name of the travel agency tomorrow as all the documents are from the school.

The suspected friendships and location of the agent shouldn't matter, the key thing is to get them to comply with a reasonable request with some urgency!  The organisation does sound lax though, but are you just hearing all this second hand from your grandson's parents?  What paperwork is there, to confirm the Ts & Cs governing participation on the trip?

Surfer01 said:

I am wondering if there is a way around this like booking another cheap flight to EU, showing this to the visa organisation and then cancelling for a refund even if there is a small admin fee?  Problem is that he is supposed to leave for the trip this coming Friday and has been excited about the trip.

Cheap flights are unlikely to be refundable, but if it's known that the booking will be cancelled then buying an expensive one might be an option?  However, this all sounds very last minute, so in the context of visa timescales it may already be too late?

Surfer01

As both parents work, in a different town to where they live, it is difficult to get to see anyone face to face at the school in question, but on the one face to face meeting last week our daughter did not get anywhere.  

As the family have only been in the country for just over a year they are a little unfamiliar with many things like ABTA etc and trust people to do the right thing.  Unfortunately they have been learning the hard way by various things hitting them in the pocket.

Need to wait until tomorrow to see if the school or travel agency can do a workaround for grandchild to get visa otherwise it is their loss of about £1000 if refund is refused!