Holiday cottage cancelled, no refund, no option to reschedule

[Whereareyourshoes]

We had booked a week at a cottage at a site in Northumberland for the end of June and had paid in full. As they will still be closed due to restrictions at that time we asked to reschedule to a date when they are open. They have refused to allow us to reschedule saying we need to claim on travel insurance for any refund.

We had another booking at Easter time for a cottage in North Yorkshire and were able to reschedule to next year no problem.

Am interested in people’s experiences when they have booked cottages directly with owners. Has anyone else with a booking while restrictions are in place had a request to reschedule refused?

Thank you!

@SwedishK - the government has told holiday accommodation owners to expect to be able to open from 4 July, not before.

[quote Clymene]@SwedishK - the government has told holiday accommodation owners to expect to be able to open from 4 July, not before. [/quote]
Ah, right. I missed that.

Our annual policy is very little more than summer trip one. Small Claims court will shift them and doesn't cost you much, stiff letter asking for a refund in 10 working days ( A reasonable amount) or its off to court, I don't suppose you paid via Paypal or credit card?
Son had a near miss with flights when the air line folded, if he paid by card he would have no protection as its through an agent a common loop hole, but Paypal just refunded no hassle

Thank you all for replying.

We had booked directly with the owners. We didn’t take out travel insurance (lesson learnt.) Money has been tight until my youngest two started school last year and we have travelled so infrequently that I didn’t pay attention to this.

We paid by credit card so will see if we have any success claiming back there. I am not expecting to receive any money back but we will do what we can.

There are an increasing number of negative reviews for this business online and I expect that will continue.

For any future holidays in the UK we will certainly be looking to see how businesses have behaved towards their customers during this time.

And we will remember to check the small print!

Thanks again everyone.

Travel insurance wouldn’t have paid up in this particular case anyway so don’t beat yourself up, but in future it’s worth having for expensive non-refundable UK holidays in case you can’t go due to illness or whatever.

We booked a cottage directly with owners and should have been there last week. Did they have a proper contract with you? We cancelled back before lockdown and lost £50 of our deposit for admin which we thought was fair. We have another booking for August and we suspect we are going to lose a lot more but are going to push to rebook for next year.

Another note of reassurance that travel insurance is unlikely to have paid out - we did have it for a trip that was meant to take place in early May. Company wouldn't pay out so we followed their advice to make the claim (despite being reasonably sure it would be rejected) and not surprisingly it was. Company have now said they will refund.

You have a contract with the owner, they aren't fulfilling it. As others have said, send them a Letter before Action to advise that you will be issuing a claim and they will be liable for the cost of this as well as the fee. Hopefully that will work.

Incidentally, would you be able to PM the name of the company? I am hoping to see my parents in Northumberland over the summer, having not seen them since Christmas. Don't want to stay as they are over 70 but it would be helpful to know who to avoid as I understand NE is pretty booked up.

Sorry you've had such a bad experience and hope it doesn't put you off going up there in happier times.

Don't want to stay with them, that should read. It's a 600 mile round trip so would make for a long day otherwise!

@MrsTravers

Don't want to stay with them, that should read. It's a 600 mile round trip so would make for a long day otherwise!

You could see if DCummings is free to share the driving!!

I own a holiday let and am giving full refunds for bookings that I've had to cancel. I figure it's no-one's fault, it takes minimal time to refund and although I won't have any income for this year from it, I would feel bad keeping other people's money during these awful times. Most clearly didn't expect a full refund, judging by the nice emails I've had in response.

If they are running it as a self employed business they could claim that back from the government.
Annual policies usually cover U.K. trips but as others have pointed out, probably not in this case.
I’d threaten them will the small claims court. Very easy to do online especially as you have a fixed cost. It costs £70 to claim less than £1,000.
www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/court-fees

This is awful! It should not be allowed. You can leave some reviews on google review or tripadvisor, and sometimes they come back to you and change their attitude. Keep us posted how it does.

wherearemyshoes instead of a section 75, try raising a chargeback with your credit card company.
Inform the holiday let place of your intention and give them 5 working days notice of it. Then request a charge back from the card company. They basically reclaim the money from the holiday let bank account.
It's a very standard procedure and one I've dealt with before

Jumping in late here, re travel insurance - we had an annual policy with Covered2go, recommended by Which.

Turned out that they never cover cancellation due to either pandemics or FCO travel advisories (even when issued after booking was made).

I’m still looking (vaguely) for one which does cover those things, but I was really shocked at how off-hand they were about it. Luckily, as it turned out all elements of the trip (to Portugal in April) refunded separately.

@Whereareyourshoes any luck with your quest for a refund?

The owner has replied that they have not frustrated the contract. We didn’t pay attention when we booked that it was a condition of booking that we take out holiday insurance to cover us in the event of forced cancellation. No refund.

Some conflicting info from consumer advice but I’m not functioning very well at moment and a bit overwhelmed by life and home schooling my three boys to process it.

I can imagine

I wonder though if that’s a reasonable booking condition. How do they define “forced cancellation”? Obviously if you had to cancel due to eg family illness you wouldn’t expect to be refunded (& for future ref it is a surprisingly good idea to have travel insurance even for UK holidays) but I’m not convinced they can wriggle out of this so easily.

Just found this which is very interesting - Hoseasons & cottages.com have been forced to back-pedal

www.gov.uk/government/news/covid-19-major-holiday-lets-firm-offers-refunds-after-cma-action

I found that link here - it looks as if Schofields are insurance providers (to cottage owners, maybe also to visitors.

www.schofields.ltd.uk/blog/4196/get-refund-cottage-holiday-cancelled/

Def worth pursuing if you can summon the energy (& find the time!)

If people have been affected by unfair cancellation terms in the wake of Covid-19, they can report them to the CMA using the online form.
Whilst the CMA is not able to respond directly to every complaint it receives, the information people provide helps the CMA to decide which issues to address. Updates on holiday accommodation can be found here and all updates on the CMA’s cancellations work can be found on the COVID-19 response page.

www.coronavirus-business-complaint.service.gov.uk/

OP, you mentioned referring the matter to your credit card company.
Have you had a close look at your CC benefits? Some include travel insurance and might cover this.

Also, some home insurance policies include legal advice and help. Worth investigating.

Insurance companies must be doing well out of this, not paying any cancellations, not paying claims because people aren't on holiday, still keeping the money for annual policies that are mostly worthless...

I had one abroad refusing to refund or move even though we are banned from country - Booking.com made several attempts. What got them to shift was going on their Facebook page and asking about it there, getting a refund now in theory at least. It's bad they won't even more dates.

The places we’ve booked have been very reasonable. We should have been in the Lakes this week but simply moved it without any loss.

The two places we’ve booked for end of the month both said we could move, if we couldn’t travel. Luckily we’ll be able to stay as planned.

It sounds very unreasonable particularly as many travel insurance companies won’t cover pandemic.

Thank you again to all who posted with advice. No refund but we have submitted a section 75 claim. Not expecting it to be accepted but at least we have tried.

We did receive an email from the holiday cottage owners this week though. They appear to have forgotten about the lockdown and hoped we had a good holiday and fun when we stayed with them. They asked if we could do them a favour and leave a review on trip advisor for them. Sadly the less than positive review I drafted was not accepted by trip advisor!

Is there anything in the T&C about force majeure? As whilst I understand the need for insurance if you cancelled the booking, in the event of force majeure, your insurance would expect the cottage to refund - as they should.

Good to see the CMA are getting involved and I hope there will be legislation to protect consumers booking UK accommodation rentals much like the Package Travel regulations. Too many people have been left out of pocket.