I am partly posting here for traffic as I don't want anyone else suckered in like I was! (I'll add an AIBU at the end though as I feel like I should!)
I am away this summer and bought some connecting flights from lastminute.com There were other places I could have got the flights from but I wanted to go with a name I am familiar with.
I was very careful booking them, making sure the times and dates etc worked (it's a flight from one major Asian city to a smaller one, part of a big trip) and, other than the irritating timer (I had twenty minutes before the prices 'expired') it seemed fine - it was a straight forward booking. There were no pop ups, no added bits of info I didn't bother to read properly. Nothing!
Five minutes later I get an email about my 'Flex Cover' and how I had a 14 day cooling off period, but could cancel and get 90% of our ticket prices to go towards another flight on lastminute.com This made me immediately look again at the actual booking and see that they had also added 'airport assistance'. Both of these unwanted extras came to just over £40 although I didn't know this at first as they take several days to send you the invoice (I am also wondering if this is so you don't immediately notice).
I called them, which proved very difficult to speak to an actual human rather than just getting cheery recorded messages, and they have now agreed to cancel and refund. It was immediate too so I suspect they must have these calls constantly. The refund is due to turn up in a few days, fingers crossed it will.
Turns out that they have been doing this a while and lots of people have had issues with it. If you need to book flights or anything else they offer, AIBU to recommend you go elsewhere?
- sorry it's a DM link, but others are under a paywall! [[https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-7652163/Lastminute-com-accused-forcing-customers-buy-insurance-product-against-will.html]]
discussion [[https://www.aspokesmansaid.com/travel-and-holidays/company-69/lastminute-com/1]]