Holiday advice

GaudinosWheels said:
I’m braced to speak to TUI this week.

Due to fly on August 11 but this week is the date the balance is due.

It’s a big family holiday with kids and grandparents and some are very worried about going and the general feeling it to either cancel or attempt to shift it to next year.

Given that the UK government has advised against all but essential travel and the Canaries are advising not to come - would that carry enough weight to ask for our deposit back?
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https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/02/coronavirus-travel-help-and-your-rights/
I've booked a summer holiday, but not paid in full yet – should I pay the balance?

This is a big decision for many who've paid deposits for trips and are currently being asked to pay the remainder or another instalment, particularly on summer holidays. Sadly, there is no right answer here – all we can do is help you weigh it up.

Here are the pros and cons of both options:

If you pay up. Hopefully, things will have improved by the time you're due to travel and you'll go ahead and have a wonderful holiday. But there's a very plausible chance that may not happen.

If a package holiday firm cancels, you're due a full refund (and it's the same if it's a flight covered by EU law, as most are). Alternatively, if your trip isn't cancelled, but the Foreign Office is still warning against travel to your destination, then provided you got travel insurance before they stopped covering coronavirus, you can likely claim.

There are risks here though:

  1. If the Foreign Office lifts its travel warning but you chose not to travel, you won't be covered by insurance.
  2. Even if the package holiday firm or airline does cancel your trip, some travel firms are making it difficult to get refunds for cancellations and are only giving vouchers.
  3. Sadly, the travel industry is under terrible threat, and frankly some firms may go bust. If it's a package holiday, check if you've ATOL or ABTA protection so you would get a full refund if the operator collapsed. If not, you're likely reliant on claiming via your card provider under chargeback or Section 75 protection – which should help, but is far from certain.
If you don't pay up. Then you're the one effectively cancelling the holiday, not the firm, so you're likely to lose your deposit.

This means that if the booking is subsequently cancelled by the operator you won't get your money back, whereas if you continue to pay and it's then cancelled, as outlined above you would get a refund.

Even then, if the deposit is small and the balance is large, and you think you're very unlikely to travel, taking this hit may be an easy option.

Ultimately it's a decision for you to make, and there's no clear answer.
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I know you'll probably be aware of the above but it's very tricky for anyone to say one way or other.

My view is this, TUI initially offered refunds up to and including 16th (?) April, then 14th May, now 11th June so you can see the pattern. We were travelling 14th May and only got the official email 21st April offering a credit note*. This means those travelling 15th May onwards must have got their email only very recently. If TUI keep the same method of rolling on the cancellation dates (which I think is likely as I just cannot see any restriction-free travel this year) you might not hear officially until end of July.

If you can get through, then it's always worth seeing what options they can offer - I'm sure they'll let you move to next year for a fee and the price difference if any - but I doubt they'll give you the 20% credit being offered to those travelling on package who have holidays confirmed cancelled.

It's a gamble either way.

EDIT: To give you an idea of time frames, the TUI email was to say the refund credit code will be emailed within 28 days of the original departure date, so this is expected mid-June for me.
 
How can Ryanair announce flights to re-start from July 1st with quarantine rules as they are. Is this not a blatant attempt to escape paying refunds to people who have flights booked after this date ?
 
Hamann Pineapple said:
How can Ryanair announce flights to re-start from July 1st with quarantine rules as they are. Is this not a blatant attempt to escape paying refunds to people who have flights booked after this date ?
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Doesn't matter what they say if there isn't anywhere to fly to! I suspect a few countries may allow flights into the country from July/August but many probably won't.
 
Hamann Pineapple said:
How can Ryanair announce flights to re-start from July 1st with quarantine rules as they are. Is this not a blatant attempt to escape paying refunds to people who have flights booked after this date ?
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We have a voice and my voice says no matter how ridiculously cheap O' Leary gets we will not use his airline ever again. Quite a fan of the cnunt for many a year but the weasel's has gone a bridge too far this time with the Covid treatment of his loyal customer base. "You can have your money back when all this is over and that may be six months" O'really O'leary !
 
canyerdogputoutafire said:
We have just been refunded today by Jet2 for flights cancelled going to Spain last Friday 24th
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had phone call last Thursday off jet 2 supposed to have been going Lanzarotte june 6 charming young lady said I would get my money back within 10 days , same evening my paypal payments were returned and I received the rest of money into bank today
Excellent service from jet 2
 
give & go said:
had phone call last Thursday off jet 2 supposed to have been going Lanzarotte june 6 charming young lady said I would get my money back within 10 days , same evening my paypal payments were returned and I received the rest of money into bank today
Excellent service from jet 2
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Jet 2 have been excellent I should have gone to Portugal on June 8 they refunded in full no problem at all.
 
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