Travel Agent Refusing Refund

nbjones

Hello

I booked some flights through Edreams and as the times changed by more than 3 hours I decided to cancel them. They told me to contact the airline, Indigo, direct to cancel them which I did.

I didn't receive the refund and to cut a long story short, Indigo are saying that they have sent the refund and Edreams claim they have never received it.  Neither will budge and my charge back claim on my Amex card failed. 

Any advice on what I can do? 

Newbie_John

Why did the claim fail? It looks like very simple case?

Aylesbury_Duck

Sounds a bit messy.  Indigo couldn't have refunded you since you didn’t pay them, so this would be Edreams' situation to sort out.

How much is involved?  Worth threatening Edreams with small claims court to see if they change their approach?

Alderbank

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Sounds a bit messy.  Indigo couldn't have refunded you since you didn’t pay them, so this would be Edreams' situation to sort out.

How much is involved?  Worth threatening Edreams with small claims court to see if they change their approach?

Are you quite certain about that?

Edreams is a Spanish company, registered in Madrid and operating under the laws of Spain. Their T&Cs on their website says they are an intermediary introducing consumers with travel service providers so that they can contract directly with the service provider (Indigo in this case), just the same as other companies in the travel/holiday sector such as AirBnB, Booking.com, Kayak, etc.

https://www.edreams.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/

@nbjones says '..to cut a long story short...' I suspect the reason why they have not yet received the refund was lost when they cut the story short.

nbjones

Thanks for your comments. I paid £1100 for the flights. Indigo are supposed to send the money to Edreams first before they refund me. I cancelled some other Indigo flights I booked through Booking.com and got the money back within days from Booking.com. Interestingly, Indigo say the company they sent the money to is called Beijing Daran Aviation. But Edreams will not tell me if this is part of their company. Edreams sent Amex their Ts and Cs and they rejected my claim on that basis, although I have since resubmitted it with evidence from Indigo that they refunded the fairs. 

MyRealNameToo

nbjones said:

Thanks for your comments. I paid £1100 for the flights. Indigo are supposed to send the money to Edreams first before they refund me. I cancelled some other Indigo flights I booked through Booking.com and got the money back within days from Booking.com. Interestingly, Indigo say the company they sent the money to is called Beijing Daran Aviation. But Edreams will not tell me if this is part of their company. Edreams sent Amex their Ts and Cs and they rejected my claim on that basis, although I have since resubmitted it with evidence from Indigo that they refunded the fairs. 

Edreams are just a middleman as they say on their website. Beijing Daran Aviation are another middleman and presumably unrelated to Edreams but the firm edreams used to get the quote and therefore pay. 

Travel is full of many layers of vendors, mainly because its impractical for an every travel agent to have contracts in place with every hotel in the world etc. 

A search for Beijing Daran Aviation identifies various complaints about people not receiving refunds and a variety of email and web addresses for them but none resolve to an actual website. They are ultimately China based meaning any action against them is going to be very difficult. 

Hopefully the discount -v- booking directly with Indigo was sufficient for the risks of these types of problems. 

DeathByFluffy

I know it doesn't help this time, but this is so common - these online travel agents are a nightmare when things go wrong. 
I've used them myself to save a fairly decent amount, but I know that if things go wrong I'm going to find myself in a world of pain. 
Good luck getting it sorted, and please try and book directly in future if you can.