The same happened to me with Direct holidays a couple of years ago. I believe that unless you have the holiday confirmation in writing they can indeed withdraw the holiday and all they have to do is refund you.

Hi Jo - I can't believe they are still making these pricing errors They may have honoured the price if you had persisted and not accepted a refund, see the link. Hope you find somewhere nice.

http://www.holidaytruths.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=95390&highlight=

Exactly the same thing happened to me with Thomsons last year, I went to trading standards etc, and the outcome was that if I refused to pay the extra and did not cancel, they would then just cancel the holiday, refund your deposit and you're back at square one, difference with us is we had paid the whole lot in full at time of booking, and I had queried the cost saying "are you sure this is right, it seems very cheap" they insisted and I paid in full on the spot only to find out that Thomsons would cancel our holiday and refund the money, it wasn't long until we were to travel, within the month, and it meant that we would have been left with no holiday, so we ended up paying up, was furious though and they offered me £100 holiday voucher by means of apology, but don't think this was worth much, as I then booked a holiday to New York, but pretty sure they didn't give me the full discount as I had the voucher to use. Its wrong they should have honoured the price that they sold the holiday at, but the customers hands are tied...Hope you have better luck. Alison

Airtours entered into a legal contract with you once they sent you a confirmation. By them sending you a confirmation they have accepted all the pricing is correct. They may have something in their T&C but to be honest it wouldn't stand up in court. If they refuse to honour to the holiday you could sue them for breach of contract. Book another holiday and charge them the difference.

Often its only the reat of legal action that will see these companies back down, because iot goes to court they know they would lose. I take no nonesense from any company and if they continue with the same line I tell them I have taken legal advice and have been to sue for breach of contract. I haven't taken any legal advice its a bluff but it works. Law is based on who can put forward the argument. Its a tactic of theirs to make you believe they can do what they want.

I must of got up MD's nose on trying to return some goods and getting a refund. I sent them a letter stating the sale of goods act and admendments, and few other legal acts and the threat of court action. They got my letter looked by their legal department. I got a email from the MD of the company calling me all the names under the sun accusing me of using legal loop hole to get a refund. Its a shame he was such a bad loser.

On another occassion a company put a black mark on my credit file which was not correct, I contacted experian who wrote to them and said the company refused to change and only the company can change the error. I wrote to the company and got a reply they would not change my credit file. I wrote them a letter stating I had taken legal advice and will be sueing them and claiming damages, I also said I am sending a complaint to the information commission because they are breaking data protection laws by giving out false information. Within 2 days I got a phone call saying the wrong letter was sent to you by mistake and we have now update your credit file.

Thats just a couple of my victories against big business, I don't care if its only a tenner and it takes a year I will not give up until I have won if I know I am in the right.

Airtours are part of the Mytravel group and I'm afraid that is bad news. Their legal department now has so much work they have a building of their own. In my case even a letter from Cheshire Trading Standards listing the number of laws they were flouting didn't get anywhere (although judging by the irrelevance of the reply they could well have been answering someone elses letter).

If you phone them you can sit in a queue for ages and going through the switchboard won't help because they will conect you to the queue. If you write allow a month for a proper reply.

My case is now at ABTA but I can see it going to court.

Steve

I understand that if you opt for ABTA arbitration you cannot then take it to court, unless the rules have changed.

luci

You may be correct, the ABTA website does say you can't go to arbitration if you've already registered the case at a court so it would be logical the other way round.

At present I have just made a complaint to ABTA in an attempt to see if they can get MyTravel to actually respond to the facts of my case, rather than the decoy case they are trying to confuse everyone with. For example,in their response to Trading Standards they tried to justify the discrepancy between their offer and reality by saying that the brochure goes to press months in advance - completely ignoring the fact that it was booked from their website which presumably has no publishers deadline.