Booking.Com drama

sambalina

We booked flights through booking.com in August 2023 for our summer holiday for this year. We paid 2.2k for flights from Gatwick - Calgary and Vancouver back to Gatwick - we are travelling between the two cities and this was a great deal for a family of 4 so we nabbed it. 

Last weekend - June 2nd i logged on to our booking to get flight numbers. Listed as an active booking so i used those details to go direct to airline website  to find our flights had been cancelled.  We are due to fly on June 17th. 

I get in touch with booking.com who said the flight were indeed cancelled and they sent an email about it on May 20th. The airline cancelled the flights, not them and they gave no reason. 

We didn't receive any email from them. Ive checked multiple times there is nothing there. 

I have since had to book new flights at an expense of an extra 1k. so as to try not to upset our travel details too much. 

Is there anything i can do to recover this extra 1k ive paid out - booking.com have requested a refund from the airline and insurance have said that as a refund has been granted there is nothing more we can do. 

Am i just going to have to accept that ive lost another 1k 

Caz3121

which airline were the original flight? does their website show alternative routings (even indirect) for your dates? Requesting rerouting rather than a refund would have been better approach. (although having not booked direct makes it more complicated with backward and forwards) I suspect the airline will have notified the contact details on the booking which were not yours.
Whilst Booking.com has a good reputation for hotel bookings, for flights I believe they use GotoGate which does not have a great reputation.

sambalina

We had a layover in Montreal, then it was the connecting flight i believe to have been cancelled - Montreal to Calgary. there was no alternatives offered, was refund only. Ended up booking direct with the airline and getting similar flights but via Toronto instead. 
The details they claim to have sent an email to are mine. My argument with them being that i never received any email at all - i have checked all boxes on the day they claim it was sent, Secondly there were no further attempts made to contact us  to ensure we knew our flights were cancelled and 3rdly a refund wasn't issued immediately. 

i have used booking.com for flights before and never had this issue. Im assuming because flights were cancelled 2 weeks before i don't have any rights here

mdann52

Can you please clarify exactly which leg was cancelled (origin->destination), and the carrier involved? This varies your rights greatly, especially if it was the outbound or inbound legs and the country the carrier is based in.