AIBU to ask Thomson for my money back (and then never fly with them again)

[Loueytb3]

I am FUMING with Thomson. Booked and paid for flights with them in January to the Canaries for October half term. We have separately booked and paid for a villa. At the end of last week, I got an email from them to say that they have cancelled the flights. But we could have flights leaving (and returning) 3 days earlier. And from a different airport. Er no - we can't because we would have to take the kids out of school. And we have already booked the villa.

Phoned them up to find out that the only flights they can offer me on the original dates are from airports hundreds of miles away. I have got a refund. However, I have now had to book alternative flights which have cost me an additional 475 (and that was using 250 of airmiles to get the price down, so actually the flights were an extra 725). What is the point in booking early if they are going to shaft you like this? I want to try and get my money back for the extra cost but have no idea whether legally we have a leg to stand on. Has anyone had this happen to them?

I really should have learnt my lesson when the last time I flew with them, they changed the return flight by 10hrs making a day flight into an early hours of the morning flight, on the day when the kids were due back to school. Clearly, their timetable is not worth the paper it's written on.

of course you can't get the difference back from Thompson.

Yes it's bloody frustrating, but reality is that the terms of flight bookings always state that flights are subject to changes/cancellations. This is life.

fwiw this is why the travel companies do so much better out of package holidays as opposed to separate flights/accommodation, because there is less likely to be an issue with e.g. the flight times etc.

I do sympathise and realise it is frustrating, I would be annoyed too, but unfortunately Thomson aren't responsible for other arrangements you've made - only for their own flights, and they have given you a refund for the flights which are no longer running.

There will be a reason why a whole flight schedule has been changed like this, but often these are things outside of their control....

They refunded you, and while it's crap and frustrating that they have cancelled your flight, if they're given you your money back, they don't owe you anything else.

Ask your travel insurer if there's anything they can do.

I'm afraid that the terms of carriage for flights state that they need to get you there and back. When and indeed how is not limited by law.

their booking terms will compensate you for late notification of changes, but not this far ahead. Sorry.

I second - talk to your travel insurer.

Bugger.

I will ask my travel insurer and I will shame on social media. But it just makes me so cross. Its bad enough they put the prices up around school holidays but when you try and book early to avoid the worst of the price hikes, they shaft you.

And of course, you can't go any other time because you would be fined...

Good luck if you complain to Thomson. I complained after I specifically requested a medical seat after breaking my ankle badly on holiday and was in plaster from my toes to above my knee. Got to the plane, my seat was mid row with absolutely no leg room.

Asked stewardess if I could be moved and she giggled and said, "can't you stick your leg into the aisle?"

Yes, that would be a reasonable thing to do on a 4 hour flight and the need to keep the aisle free for the food & duty free trolley runs and people needing to go the loo, wouldn't it?

They eventually huffed and puffed and found me a seat with the necessary leg room but did they make it seem like I had done it on purpose to piss them off!

Complained in writing and they responded first to say that I should have asked for a medical seat - I HAD and the check in girl had said I had been allocated a special seat with extra leg room - and then after I phoned them to reiterate that I had, replied in writing to say that the stewardess had filed a complaint about MY attitude and that they were taking no further action as it was a non-complaint!

They may be the biggest bunch of cunts UK tour operator but I have never ever booked with them since. Wouldn't give them the steam of my piss.

Sorry OP but that is a risk you take when you buy bits of your holiday from different companies.
If you book a package, you may have to pay a little more but then the operator is responsible for coordinating everything.

You can get quite substantial compensation for flights being cancelled, BUT it only applies within two weeks of travel.

Which is when I always book....

Revenge - that's awful!!

Aga - but how on earth can you do that when you have to travel in school holidays? There is no way we would get 5 seats on a plane that close to the departure date.

[I do realise that we are very lucky to be able to fly at all btw]

Thomson aren't a scheduled flight, they'd be a chartered flight. If you want to be sure to fly when you booked, book scheduled.

100's of miles away? In the canaries? Really?

I imagine that distance refers to the UK airport!

I was about to say the same as CheeseandPickledOnion - that is the risk you take when you book a chartered airline. You'd be better off even with the budget scheduled airlines than a chartered one.

I agree re charter flights. When I was growing up we all went on package type hols and the charter flights were shocking, always delayed and at odd times but it was the tour operators issue to sort out.

In these current times we do look to book things seperately often for cost reasons or simply because it suits US to do so.

I book a mixture of package and DIY. However with DIY you do take a risk. They are completely independent parts of your holiday and as such you take the risk that when Thompson's cancel your flight what you have chosen to do without Thompson being involved in absolutely nothing to do with them.

And two weeks before you go to book your flights..... (you dont have a hope in hell if you have kids and you are sticking to the school holidays). Surely booking so close to depature date means you get the flights no one else wants or worse non at all!!

They won't refund the difference. I only ever use scheduled flights if booking accommodation separately after a similar experience twenty odd years ago....

I refuse to use charter. I think I'd rather use Ryan Air. It's travelling in the middle of the night that always gets me.

Got a lawyer friend to look at the T&C's for me and you're right they will not pay out. No point me wasting a stamp on them. They are not getting any more money out of me. Ever.

Re charter flights - until very recently, there weren't any scheduled flights to this island. BA have now started, but ironically, we didn't book with them originally as their flight times were less good. Now I wish we had because we've rebooked with them and paid more. I refuse to fly ryanair. Easyjet for reasons best known to them do not release their flights for half-term until April by which point the villa would have been booked. Otherwise we would probably have booked with them.

Cheeseandpickledonion - if a scheduled flight did this (ie cancel the flight) would you be able to claim back the extra cost of booking another flight? What is there to stop BA (or someone else) doing the same?

Scheduled flights fly no matter what, their flight slot is booked. Charter flights, as used by the likes of Thomas Cook, fill in the "gaps" in the schedules, and only fly once they have sold sufficient seats. That's why charter flights are prone to changes which scheduled flights are not.

Essentially, a holiday company "leases" a plane from an airline for your chartered flight, and if they can't sell enough tickets for that particular date, it can't cover the costs of travel so the flight gets cancelled.

A scheduled flight will fly no matter how many tickets have been sold, so you should always buy your flights direct from the airline, unless you've bought a complete holiday package from a holiday company.

Um, scheduled airlines still often change their schedules.

If a route doesn't make money the airline is obviously going to reduce the frequency of the flights or withdraw from the route altogether. used to work for BA, hated making those phonecalls to try to rebook passengers

I understand that cuntbiscuit - but in this case, it was over half term so I would have thought that the flight was pretty booked. The fact that the prices on both easyjet and ba went up overnight after they cancelled the flight suggests that there were quite a few people scrabbling around to re-book.

Basically - you are at the mercy of the airline - scheduled or chartered.

You are at the mercy of the airline scheduled or not but things are far less likely to be changed if you have booked a scheduled flight. Also unless the route has been cancelled altogether a scheduled airline will usually get you on another one of their planes a few hours later, rather than a few days later.

Loueyth, we went to Tenerife during Easter, booked the night before, no problem getting seats.

Actually there is a huge amount of capacity there. If you were going somewhere more esoteric than last minute booking might not work out

I do understand your frustration with Thomson OP, but any other charter flight operator could have and would have done the same.
It's not unique to Thomson, in fact I suspect that having such large resources they are probably less likely to cancel flights than a smaller operator.