Cancelled holiday due to lack of internet

[Rainingcatsandog]

We were due to go to the Highlands today for a week. The holiday company informed us that the internet isn't working due to a general issue on the area and they don't know when it will be fixed. I was offered £75 off or the chance to change the date .I took the latter.
I'm now feeling annoyed as I think we should have been offered a full refund.
Does anyone know my rights?

Holidays in the Scottish Highlands aren't always compatible with planning ahead. Last week we had very warm weather - you might have planned a 20 mile hike and had your plans scuppered by the weather. Today is fairly breezy - not ideal for that planned kayaking trip. Tuesday you'd maybe planned to go to an outdoor attraction but the forecast is rain....

It's usually far less stressful to look at the weather forecast in the evening before deciding what to do the next day. And it's very handy to have internet or a strong mobile signal to look up opening hours, book tickets online.

Highland Wildlife park near Aviemore certainly does - 15% off if you book online. Also availability on things like boat trips and distillery tours is limited - if you're waiting until 9am to phone on a landline or to pop along in person, everyone who has access to the internet the night before is in ahead of you.

There's quite a few places in Scotland which are lovely but signal terrible. If going there we just plan ahead, book before we go etc.

I don’t get your point. If you have wifi at the holiday cottage, you can look at the forecast when you are there, pick the best day to go the restaurant with the great loch views or whatever, book it for two days hence.

If OP had booked a place and the oven was on the blink, would posters say “ah, it’s summer, just eat salad, lovely lettuce available in Scotland” or “when I go wild camping, I just boil up some rice on a campfire”?

If DP and I had to spend a week away with nothing but jigsaws and the great outdoors, we'd probably end up either divorced or dead

And maybe you prefer to do those things rather than use the Internet, it doesn't follow in any sense at all that other people would feel the same way

Surely there are things that you don't like doing that other people love to do on holiday, would you be happy to do those things?

It's almost like you think you're a better person than the OP

I was around long before the rise of the internet thank you. However, most places now have QR codes to scan to access location/accommodation info and I no longer carry an AA map in my glovebox...like most people in 2026...I know that might blow your mind.

Unless the holiday was advertised as an internet fest, it's not an essential part of the facilities. It is ONE of the facilities they offered which they then couldn't provide, They don't have to provide it. Offering money off or a different date if you really don't want to go without it, is VERY reasonable.

While you are out walking find a cafe and use their WiFi while you have a cup of tea to download some books/music/films.

Not having WiFi in your accommodation isn’t the end of the world. Unless you are in a mobile signal black spot you can always add extra data to your phone with the £75 goodwill gesture they were providing and use that.

While you are out walking find a cafe and use their WiFi while you have a cup of tea to download some books/music/films.

Download some films to what? I don’t tend to carry a laptop or iPad on a walk. And often cafes (reasonably!) have the sort of wifi speed that’s good for a quick check of a weather app or a bus timetable but isn’t designed for big downloads.

You know someone would - suggest they make a fire pit in the grounds and stone bake their bread. We didn’t always have ovens you know…

Wait til I tell my teenagers internet access isn’t essential. I might have existed before internet, but they haven’t.

It is a pretty important facility! I’d prefer to go somewhere with a broken oven or washing machine than with broken internet

I do agree that the remedy of money off or changing the dates is a reasonable one, though.

Fire pit? Luxury!

I hope OP is going to fell her own trees for that…

Buy a pay as you go router for the week and smarty sim problem solved for about £30

Depending on where they are in the Highlands, the 5G signal could potentiallly be slow to non-existent.

That's why they wanted the standard WiFi in the property - so they don't have to rely on getting a solid/any mobile signal.

I've been to more than one holiday cottage that had wifi but no mobile signal. A bit of a pain when you have to work one afternoon of the holiday and you can't get a text message to get past the two factor authentication

Just for clarity. I have been away several times without internet or mobile signal and enjoyed it .The last time was more difficult as we had a lot of things going on at home and needed to keep in touch. We had to walk half an hour up a hill to get a very patchy signal.

I worry that in an emergency no one could contact us and we couldn't call anyone if there was a medical emergency or our car broke down .

I enjoy jigsaws and read a lot. I am not a doom scroller and don't care about social media . I do however like to watch iplayer sometimes and know that people can contact me SOMEHOW if needed. The place we were going to has a phone signal but I just didn't want engineers trooping in and out and all that hassle whilst on holiday .

an outage affecting the whole area isn't the holiday company's fault. I think it's a fair solution to offer money off or alternative dates.

I wouldn't go on a holiday without the internet

That would be a selling point for me! I would read actual books.

On holiday we use the Internet for family movies and games as well as getting info on the local area and ordering food. We do sometimes want a holiday without Internet, but it's unlikely to be in a cottage somewhere. If we book somewhere with Internet, the holiday we want will not be nearly as good without it.

There is no internet in the cottage we stay in on the Isle of Arran, absolute bliss. If we’re desperate for internet we’ll pop somewhere that has WIFI, but haven’t needed to so far. We can just about get a signal in the cottage using our data allowance, if you hang out of the bedroom window 😝

We love getting off the conveyor of the rat race and finding peace, the TV only has 5 channels. It’s refreshing, we play board games and completely switch off, that’s what holidays are for 🤗

Wow you have a problem. Absolutely not a full refund. I take my phone to order a taxi home after holiday but it stays in safe for the duration of the holiday.