Lost days from holiday due to flight disruption

macandtosh148

We booked a holiday to see The White Spirit Bears in Canada, it was a Canadian based company who arranged internal flights, accommodation, food, transfers from sea plane to hotel and return trip and tour guides. The plane after us waiting in the airport for about 8 hours was cancelled the next day it was re scheduled we lost 1.5 days of our holiday which was 4500 Canadian Dollars. The visa we used to pay the deposit with are refusing to reimburse us for this lost time due to it not being a British company that we booked with, they have taken 4 months to come to this decision which has now made us to late to try and get our money back from else where. Is this correct as I always was led to believe that paying by visa was a guarantee.?

eskbanker

Paying by card does offer some protection but it's not a guarantee as such!

A claim from a purchase via a UK card shouldn't be rejected simply on the basis that the merchant isn't in the UK, but the onus is on you to provide evidence of breach of contract, and in turn that means that any contract under Canadian law needs to be measured against the provisions of that jurisdiction, i.e. the UK Package Travel Regulations don't apply, for example.  A significant flight delay doesn't in itself mean that you suffered a quantifiable loss that the provider is liable for, so you'll need to consider exactly what it is that you're claiming for, in more meaningful terms than "lost 1.5 days of our holiday".

Does your travel insurance cover such circumstances?

Edit: was this a credit card or debit card, and if the former, were you claiming under section 75 or chargeback?

DullGreyGuy

Why was the plane cancelled?

As it's a Canadian internal flight sold by a Canadian company you need to check what the Canadian laws are on compensation for delays etc. 

S75 of the CCA, assuming it's a Visa Credit Card, doesn't give you a "guarantee" but simply means that rather than suing the Canadian company you can sue your card issuer instead. It gives you no additional rights and if Canadian Law states you get $1 per week delayed you are then that would be the same if claiming from either company. 

As above however, it's unclear if it was a credit card and if it was a chargeback or S75 claim... the timescale suggests it may be S75 but not definitely. 

grumbler

macandtosh148 said:

...The visa we used to pay the deposit with are refusing to reimburse us for this lost time due to it not being a British company that we booked with...

Visa, not your card provider?

born_again

macandtosh148 said:

We booked a holiday to see The White Spirit Bears in Canada, it was a Canadian based company who arranged internal flights, accommodation, food, transfers from sea plane to hotel and return trip and tour guides. The plane after us waiting in the airport for about 8 hours was cancelled the next day it was re scheduled we lost 1.5 days of our holiday which was 4500 Canadian Dollars. The visa we used to pay the deposit with are refusing to reimburse us for this lost time due to it not being a British company that we booked with, they have taken 4 months to come to this decision which has now made us to late to try and get our money back from else where. Is this correct as I always was led to believe that paying by visa was a guarantee.?

Travel insurance should have been the route taken here. After claim via airline/travel co.

But the fact it is not a UK company makes no difference. But with no idea which route was used to try & claim money back. We can't even guess.

Is this about internal transfers or the flight to Canada? As that is not clear? If flight to Canada, who booked that?

macandtosh148

We booked the flights to and from Canada. The weeks holiday was 19000 Canadian dollars and to loose 1 and a half days was a big cost. Our holiday insurance says it doesn't cover lost days. The airline was Pacific Coastal airlines and they are saying that the cancellation was due to the plane not being safe to fly, but earlier they had said they had another plane arriving to replace it. As it was unfit to fly they are not liable for any loss. We paid  only the deposit  with the visa card as the balance was more than we could pay on a visa so we used a debit card. We contacted Halifax who we had the visa card from and they have taken 4 months to say that we are not covered as its not a British based holiday company. We contacted the Spirit Bear Lodge who organised all of the package from Vancouver to the Lodge which was an internal flight( cancelled)( and the 90 minutes by boat to get to the Lodge where the White bears are. They are saying that they are not liable even though it was all booked through them.  We are trying to claim back using section 75.

Gandalf644

Just to be clear, was the holiday (including hotels, tours, internal flights etc) booked as a single package including your flights to/from Canada?

Or were the flights booked as 'flight only' and you arranged your own hotels, tours, internal flights etc in Canada via a seperate company/companies?

Thanks

born_again

Don't even think S75 will cover this as hard to see any breech of contract. As airline will have this covered by T/C

Still not sure if it was the plane to Canada that had the issue or the internal flight?

macandtosh148

We booked the flights to and from Canada and all of the rest of the trip was organised by The Spirit Bear Lodge. There were people from all over the world there so everyone had to make their own arrangements to Vancouver airport. We are not trying to claim the money back from the airline but from The Spirit Bear Lodge as we paid them for the weeks holiday.

born_again

Is this the company?

https://spiritbear.com/

IMPORTANT: Pacific Coastal may delay or cancel flights for various reasons, including weather and mechanical issues. We strongly recommend staying one night in Vancouver on each side of your trip in addition to purchasing travel insurance. We book our guest flights, however Pacific Coastal is a third party provider and Spirit Bear Lodge does not have control over their operations or service. If a flight is canceled Pacific Coastal will rebook on the next available flight or potentially schedule a flight for the following day. If Pacific Coastal cannot rebook for the following day it is potentially possible to charter a float plane at an additional cost. Please understand travel on this remote part of the coast of British Columbia is challenging and just getting to the lodge is part of the adventure.

Did you pay The Spirit Bear Lodge direct for the whole travel & stay, or where the flights billed separately?

As the above T/C will at best guess rule out S75 as no breech of contract. Also is protentional for no debtor, creditor link.

eskbanker

macandtosh148 said:

We paid  only the deposit  with the visa card as the balance was more than we could pay on a visa so we used a debit card. We contacted Halifax who we had the visa card from and they have taken 4 months to say that we are not covered as its not a British based holiday company.

How exactly are Halifax phrasing their response?

Just to reiterate the point made in my earlier post, the fact that it's not a British company isn't in itself grounds to reject a s75 claim, but there could be a couple of lines of argument they're running:

1. If they determine that paying Spirit Bear for services provided by a different supplier (the airline) then they may be asserting that the arrangement falls foul of s75's requirement for there to be an unbroken debtor-credit-supplier chain.  In the UK, the Package Travel Regulations effectively make the package organiser the supplier, thereby permitting s75 claims, but those regulations won't cover a booking made via a Canadian company.
2. Alternatively, they may simply be unconvinced that there's a breach of contract as such, thereby denying a claim - the onus is on you to demonstrate a breach of contract, either based on the Ts & Cs or the overarching legislation (again, in the UK and EU, there are compensation rights when flights are cancelled, but these regulations don't apply to internal flights within Canada).

What specifically was the basis of your claim, i.e. did you refer to actual legal or contractual rights and obligations, etc, in asserting a breach of contract, or just 'our holiday was shorter because a flight was delayed'?