To feel robbed by love holidays

[Chloefairydust]

So in May me and my partner booked a holiday with love holidays, regrettably. Their customer service is non existent. They cancelled our flights after we had already paid for them, and never rebooked flights. We couldn’t contact them to reorganise our flights, so we ended up having to organise our own flights thinking we could get a partial refund on the holiday as obviously they never organised our flights. However there’s no way of getting in touch with them and they basically owe us £1400 . I have come to accept I’m never going to see that money again. Just wondering if anyone else has had the same experience?

[junebirthdaygirl]

Well it's good you are highlighting this here as l actually had their site open yesterday looking at holidays but now you have exposed your dealings with them l will run a mile. The business they will lose here will hopefully far outweigh your money. No consolidation to you l know but thanks for the warning. Maybe someone here will know better than me how you could get your money back.

[miniwh]

Did you by any chance pay with a credit card OP?

[BigChesterDraws]

They cancelled your flight reservations or the airline cancelled the flights completely?

[FlowerArranger]

Their website says they are member of iata, but there is no reference to abta.

I have no idea if iata offers any protetion similar to abtao, but if I were you I'd call them in the first instance.

[Chloefairydust]

Yeah definitely don’t book with them, they take your money from you and then you can just never get in touch with them again, absolute nightmare… also they put loads of fake reviews on trip advisor, if you want to see the truth check out their complaints on Facebook… I certainly wish I had researched more before going with them

[ThePoetsWife]

If you paid with a credit card, you can get an refund via the credit card company.

If you have twitter, it's a great way of getting companies to respond to complaints as they hate the publicity.

[Chloefairydust]

No not covered by ABTA , we checked while trying to figure out how to get a refund, come to the conclusion that they have basically stole our money

[Chloefairydust]

Unfortunately we didn’t use a credit card

[Chloefairydust]

Airline cancelled flights however love holidays never reorganised new flights and didn’t give us our money back for those flights either

[latelydaydreams]

Have you tried Live chat? My DD had flights with them and managed to get hold of people within a couple of minutes.

[Sally99]

Could Trading Standards help?

[Chloefairydust]

we did try live chat before our holiday, they basically said they would sort out our flights and never did, kind of felt like everytime you have the live chat, it’s just someone in a call centre in India that doesn’t know what they are doing and basically telling you anything you want to hear but then not following through on their promises. As soon as the holiday starts the option of live chat is gone and there is literally no way of getting in touch with them. Like if any emergencies happened while we were on holiday we wouldn’t have even been able to get in touch with love holidays. I think the company is a complete joke. I don’t know how they actually get away with it, I think it’s criminal.

[Chloefairydust]

I’m not sure trading standards cover travel agencies, I tried to find an odbudsman (is that the right word?) for travel companies and couldn’t find anything

[LongtimeOW]

Oh no, I've got a holiday booked through them for January!! Hope you manage to get your money back.

[Funnyfive]

If you can’t get a refund by any other means I’d go to trading standards and the small claims court. No way would I lose £1,400 without court action, they probably won’t even turn up so in that case you’ll likely win by default, Then if they don’t pay get the Sheriffs office to collect the money.

[fiesta]

So sorry OP. Unfortunately there are a lot of fraudsters out there in the travel industry. My SIL once lost £3000 anf my mum £1000.So its always best to book using a credit card and preferably go direct to the airline if just booking flights.

[LongtimeOW]

Just had a quick Google, they are ATOL protected so if iyoir holiday is booked as a package you should be protected. You can fill a claim form in on line if you've not tried this already?

[Chloefairydust]

I’m going to try to go through trading standards.

Just checked ATOL and you need a certificate to make a claim? Love holidays never gave us a certificate. So I’m not sure about that.

Learn from my mistakes though people, avoid love holiday like the plague

[CinnamonOrangeCremeBrulee]

I had issues with them over the pandemic. I got a lot of advice via Martin Lewis try his website.

I've just looked unfortunately they were ABTA protected at the time it seems but I used the following emails and copied in the airline.

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Worth a try! Also had success with VISA charge back before ...even on a debit card.

[rwalker]

I’ve used them no problem
if u paid on debit card still contact your bank the can do charge back

[endofthelinefinally]

Travel insurance?

[chouxpetitfilous]

You can't speak to trading standards directly. You can call the citizens advice consumer helpline and they will advise you and also report the trader to trading standards.

Did you book it as a package? That will be the key point regarding what laws it comes under.

[Iwantmyoldnameback]

There's no way I'd let this go if it was £140 let alone £1400. I'm assuming you didn't have insurance in place? If not I would speak to your bank as you used a debit card and failing that do a money claim which is all done on line,you pay a small court fee. Never failed yet.

[Whydidimarryhim]

Do not let it go - it’s despicable - speak to your bank asap and do the small claims court. Post on social media.

[Dannexe]

We had a nightmare with them earlier this year. It took literally hours of being on hold to try to get through to someone. We did eventually get a refund but oh my goodness I needed a holiday afterwards!