To think people should cut the holiday companies some slack?

[sunfloweryy]

I’ve had my holiday cancelled for two weeks time - fair enough. Company are offering credit plus a discount on future holidays or you can apply for a refund but it could take several months.

I get this. They are obviously experiencing massively high call volumes, don’t have enough staff and are hemoraging money.

But loads of people are on SM demanding refunds, swearing, being rude etc. AIBU to think there are bigger problems and we should lay off for a while and let things die down?

I know it’s shit, I want my money back too but the cost is already sunk!

@LouiseCollina I am in the same boat and it is annoying but ‘boiling’?

Has it occurred to not occurred to you that the staff might be sick, or furloughed and that’s why they haven’t replied?

That’s the way I’m trying to think of it. The money is gone, it was spent on a holiday so whether the holiday happened or not it’s not available to be spent on something else at this time. This whole situation is truly shit in lots of ways but having to reschedule a holiday or wait a few months for a refund isn’t the end of the world.

I'm fine if I get information. When company sends an email saying that they will send an email with refund link that has to be accepted 24h before the trip. They never send the link and then close all their customer service phone/email/chat. That's not ok.

I'm really keen for the budget airlines to survive this so have opted for vouchers. I almost always book and travel independently and would hate to no longer have that option.

@OhamIreally
Glad to hear you are taking the vouchers
Would be great if you could support the agents that’s deal with the budget airlines too

It is a crap situation for everyone, but TUI are being particularly shit. I've got a balance due for a July holiday and my options are:
A) cancel and lose 800 deposit
B) pay 3k balance knowing they will do everything possible to avoid giving me a refund.

Travel insurance is no use, as the responsibility is with the operator.

Even if they let me rearrange, it's 1.5k more on the same dates next year.

And the way they treated customers at the start of March, operating holidays with no regard for safety, puts me off ever using them again.

@Lala241280 there's no way Sykes can survive this. They're now the subject of a class legal action by hundreds of their customer. This is entirely their own fault. I said I won't be spending any of my money with them, thousands of other customers will follow suit. I said I feel sorry for their staff. I said I won't be sad when the company fails - because of their own greed.

A friend of mine has 3 kids, one on the heart transplant list. They got a charity grant and booked a holiday with Sykes. It was Easter week and it cist £850. Sykes have raised the price for same week next year to £1,670. My friend cannot afford the extra, have been denied a refund and so they lose the grant they had and any hope of a break. Do you really expect everyone to keep spending with a company that treats customers like this? Perhaps if you knew someone like my friend you might not be so outraged that a greedy company is getting their comeuppance.

The argument that so many staff are furloughed, so you can't speak to them and they can't action refunds just doesn't wash.
Companies were supposed to furlough if there was no work for their staff.
Their accounts or store staff clearly need to be working to allow the company (yes, TUI) meet the package industry's legal requirement of processing a refund in 14 days. There is plenty of that work available.

I was an hour and a half on hold with TUI before I got an answer. They wanted me to rebook, but honestly, who is in any position to know when they could rebook? My holiday is actually £300 cheaper next year (not taking into considerationg the 20% incentive to rebook) but going in Easter next year just may not be possible.
I'd rather they fullfilled their legal requirements.
If they were operating transparently, and honestly, like Jet2 who refunded many of the same date holidays straight away then I'd book with them again.
They aren't. The hotel I want is only provided by TUI (if it itself is still operating next year) and yet I still am not keen to give them my money again.

We booked our first holiday abroad in 15 years for this summer, we are unlikely to get it but willing to change it to next year so at least we’d have something to look forward to.

I think the problem with many travel companies is the lack of communication, my friend is due to go away next week and only heard from the company 10 days before the holiday. If people would stop phoning the travel companies and let them contact their customers things would move faster.

Companies were supposed to furlough if there was no work for their staff.

A fundamental flaw of the furlough scheme really.

In the travel company’s case there was plenty of work to do, but no money to pay them.

What travel companies need to do, is approach their banks to extend their facilities to allow them to refund their clients, in line with their legal obligations.

I actually work in banking, we’re in the midst of facilitating these government backed loans for what was initially small companies, but the scheme has been extended to mid corporates.

Travel companies can ask their banks to provide finance to meet their obligations to provide cash flow support, we are all willing to do so as we understand it’s a cash flow issue. The travel industry however are very reluctant however to make use of this, contrary to every other sector I’m working with.

"Their accounts or store staff clearly need to be working to allow the company (yes, TUI) meet the package industry's legal requirement of processing a refund in 14 days. "

Exactly this.

Tui have shut phonelines and furloughed staff, and yet are saying they do not have enough staff to deal with their legal obligations.

If that is the case, then stop furloughing your staff. And it's still not an excuse anyway. Automated processes are a thing. Automatic refunds are a thing. They are clearly delaying paying refunds not because of any procedural difficulties, but because they would rather sit on people's money for as long as possible while their staff cut/paste the same useless post in answer to every email and message sent to them.

We've had a few things cancelled. BA - we took a voucher as we'll spend it, but it's a complete pain to spend the thing and you've got to call them, rather than doing it online. I've tried twice, wasted 2 hours and got no-where.
Scilly Isles - plan B holiday, we have a credit to use whenever, although originally the only offered us a re-book this year between November and March (with school age children?) When we asked for a refund they rescinded and said we could re-book anytime in the next year as long as we paid the difference.
Virgin also offered a re-book within 9 months, but the flights were several thousand pounds more than our original ones to the same destination. We said that they could either waive the extra or refund us.
Everyone else has just refunded the whole amount.
We're waiting for Eurostar to cancel our train over the May bank holiday, as again their re-booking window is too small, so we'll press for a refund there too.

I'd be happy to take a refund from most companies as long as it's reasonable and has a long enough booking window. It really annoys me though when they try and take the piss.

What travel companies need to do, is approach their banks to extend their facilities.

You think this hasn’t occurred to them?

Completely agree. We have a holiday booked for June and are anticipating it being cancelled, we've thought about a refund but would rather go on the holiday, albeit at a much later date so would rather the holiday company still exists, not to mention the jobs it would take with it if it ceased to trade.

@BoingBoingyBoing I can't speak for other TO's but our refunds are not automated, someone from our finance team has to physically action the refund. Even if they have the normal amount of staff in, it is not feasible to be able to action this amount of refunds in the normal PTR timescale, the amount of bookings to cancel and process refunds and/or vouchers for is astranomical compared to what they would normally do. The people on the phones are rarely the same people who action refunds but they are the ones who are get shouted and sworn at. On top of Covid19 a lot of us are still trying to deal with the fallout from Flybe's failure also - it is not just Covid19 we have had to deal with recently

I thought Tui had just been bailed by the German government.

I won’t be travelling with them ever again that’s for sure.

I personally think the industry is going to struggle to get back to normal going forward.

There is no actual reason for that though. It's not hard (I've done it) to set up automatic refunds for companies and many companies do it. There is no reason for refunds - expecially when there are clearly a lot to go through - to be hand processed when the technology to automate it exists and can be bought as off the shelf packages.

If you accept a retail credit note from jet2 it is valid until 31july 2020, if you haven't rebooked anything for this year or next year by then you will be refunded cash. If jet2 go bust your credit note is covered under an ATOL certificate so you wont lose your money. They confirmed this to me

Jet2 I’m sure have confirmed this to you, ABTA would very much like this to be the case. But the fact is, ATOL have not, the law hasn’t changed, and these RCN’s as they stand, are not secured.

I work for a tour op also and I can completely appreciate why people are angry and worried, but please just remember the people on the other end of the phone/email/angry facebook post are human and are just following instructions and are very stressed out themselves trying to deal with an awful lot of customers. Some of them may have things they are also trying to deal with and juggle, on top of trying to sort out your holidays. Yes I know that's what we are paid for, but that does not mean you have the right to shout and swear at us. Some of us are working over weekends and past midnight tying to keep on top of workload because people are just not letting us breathe and work through it. If everyone backed off a bit, they will get answers and refunds in due course. Sorry, I've just had enough of this bashing, constantly, every single day. Yes you might be loyal customers and we are disgusting for treating customers this way, but sorry, not one single person is special right now. Giving refunds to everyone straight away will bankrupt a company, you had that money allocated for a holiday and it won't be going anywhere, so take a step back and just wait. Won't be coming back on to get abused even more, but just had to say the above!!!

@BoingBoingyBoing at least I think our refunds are manually processed 🤔 I must admit it's not something I've ever got involved with but our passenger numbers would be no where near the likes of Tui, we're a more specialised operator. All I'm saying/asking is for people to be a bit more patient. Even ABTA have advised on their website that these are not normal circumstances so the 14 day rule is impossible companies to adhere to

Can't believe so many people seem prepared to take this lying down. The holiday companies don't care about you.

They know they might have legal cases to deal with later but that’s a lesser evil than the whole firm going bust and hundreds of jobs being lost. They’re hoping that by surviving, they can sort out the mess of compensation later or ideally get help from the government in some way - be that financially or regulatory. This is a situation like no other. New laws & travel regulations will come out of this directly

And this is the whole crux of the issue. Travel companies will have legal issues to deal with, which they will lose because the law hasn’t changed (much that they would like it to). The lesser evil to the travel company is to prevent itself going bust. That’s not the lesser evil to it’s thousands of clients who will lose their money over this scheme ABTA would like to happen, but is yet to be approved. They hope they can sort out the mess of compensation and ideally might get some help from the government. But as a customer who is owed a refund, I don’t want to underwrite the travel industry’s asks.

@underneaththeash on a side note, for BA if it's a holiday, if you took the voucher option online, you should've received an email confirming the voucher request and amount, you can then book and pay online then reply to the email with your new reference and they'll either reduce balance amount or if you paid in full, they will refund that amount back to the card you paid. At least that's what my email says lol

@LaurieMarlow as I said, I work in banking. We’re proactively offering extended facilities to travel companies as we understand they need cash flow, but they don’t want to take them because they see ATOL as their lender of last resort.