Accidentally double booked flight

washingtonpowers

I was recently in a cafe in Miami and was searching Skyscanner for flights home. I saw a suitable flight at 16:55 the same day to Edinburgh via Amsterdam with KLM. This was around lunchtime that day. Skyscanner led me to believe that Edreams had the best price. I went to book the ticket through the Edreams app. I left the Edreams app to verify the payment on my banking app. I returned to the Edreams app to see an error message. I went through this exact same process twice and gave up, believing that someone else had booked that ticket or the price had gone up. For whatever reason, it wasn't possible to book the ticket. I then found the same flight on KLM's website and successfully booked it on KLM's website. When I got back to my hotel to pick up my bags, I checked my email for the flight confirmation and realised that the Edreams booking had in fact gone through and I now had two tickets for the same flight. In fact, I was given the exact same booking confirmation code for both bookings. I informed both Virgin Atlantic, who the Edreams ticket was booked through, and KLM on my arrival to check-in for my flight at the airport. In the end I checked into the flight that I booked directly with KLM. They said that I had to contact Edreams for a refund. I contacted Edreams who say that they contacted KLM who refused to refund the second ticket. I've also complained directly to KLM. I've checked the Edreams Ts &Cs and I've found the following section:

3.2.1. WHEN YOU MAKE A FLIGHT BOOKING VIA THIS SITE, THE CONTRACT OF TRANSPORT IS BETWEEN THE AIRLINE AND YOU, AND NOT BETWEEN US AND YOU. Any problems arising from the contract of carriage (delays, schedule changes, cancellations, refunds, fare rules,  loss of baggage, etc.), and the related obligations and liability, sit  directly with the airline, and not with us. In such cases there is no liability of the intermediary, including joint and several liability.

I believe that Edreams are responsible due to their dodgy app. I also believe that KLM are responsible because surely their systems shouldn't allow for the same booking confirmation code to be issued twice. I've supplied a screenshot of my double booking and both tickets with the same flight confirmation number.

The plan is to contact the Airline Ombudsman. I've already tried contacting my bank.

eskbanker

The plan is to contact the Airline Ombudsman

Not aware of the existence of such a body, who exactly are you thinking of?

Newbie_John

Generally speaking as it's post flight now, you booked via EDreams that are extremely hard to deal with - and if you dig deeper in their T&C's you will realise all the costs that come with it.

But what's interesting is that you have received the same booking code from both - are you sure there aren't any other emails to any other booking? If that's the case then what has your bank said? It does sound odd, but who knows what happened there - and iI'm not sure how could EDreams access your reservation directly with KLM?

Westin

I don’t believe it possible for the same PNR reference to be issued by the same airline on the same flight.

Is the booking code you refer to a 6 or 7 long alphanumeric code?