I have tried e-mailing direct and have had no response any info will be greatly accepted someone told me because i have the tickets if i tried to cancel it now and they realised i had not paid they could make me pay the full lot

there is every possibility they will demand the money. If you did not cancel the holiday at the time then you may have to pay a substantial amount now if you cancel. Why did you not cancel at the time?

To be honest i do not know. If i turned up at the airport would these tickets be valid do you think?
I do not think i am going to as we do not have the spending money.
Would they think i have paid the holiday could they have been a mix up as i thought you only recieved tickets once the holiday was paid in full

cant understand why they have never even sent a reminder letter for payment and why your holiday booking has been allowed to continue but fiona is right if you never cancelled the holiday you will at the very least still be responsible for the balance of the full deposit and I would say probably cancellation charges that would be due under their terms and conditions for a holiday cancelled 3 weeks prior to it.

lyn

You booked a holiday so you entered into a contract.

If you had cancelled then under the T&Cs relating to the "low deposit scheme" you are liable for the balance of the deposit.

The fact you chose to ignore it does not absolve you from liability.

Now the tickets have arrived another problem arises. No doubt it is a clerical error.

It is possible that someone else has not received their tickets and is even now chasing them. If that is so then the error will come to light.

At that point it is entirely up to the TO what action - including legal - they wish to take.

Should you take advantage of the fact you have received the tickets then you would be committing a f r a u d u lent action and the penalty for that would be for a lot more than the deposit.

You would also acquire a criminal record that would have other more serious consequences.

fwh

Here are directs terms and conditions . http://www.directholidays.co.uk/AniteNextPage.asp?p=EXTRAINFO_34161

doesnt look like there is a deposit balance to pay but could be a lot worse and as you are due to travel in 14 days time you could possibly liable for 90% of the holiday cost .

pay particular attention to to the section "when you book your holiday you agree to pay us either " section and the canellation charges on page 2 . It could be cheaper for you to take the holiday

Increasingly more TOs don't send out reminders when a balance is due. However, I have always thought they would pick up on it if the balance never arrived and cancel it automatically. I have to say though when I have cancelled before I have always written to them anyway, just so that things are clear on all sides.

In this instance I presume that the tickets are valid but if you contact them about this then you run the risk of having to pay the entire balance. There is a possibility it could be an error but if they have your name on then this is quite unlikely.

Hmmm, it's a bit of pickle, that's for sure. First thing to do is check the T&Cs to see what they say about paying the balance.

I would phone them and say "why have I received these tickets when I cancelled the holiday ages ago?" and see what they say.

If you decide you dont want /or cant afford to go dor I would be inclined to do the same as EC and try bluffing your way out . After all they seemed to have messed up to

lyn

That might be your best bet. Not sure if it has a lot of chance of succeeding though as you can't provide proof. Even if you manage to go on that holiday it is highly possible that the fact you haven't paid will come to light. It was a strange decision of yours not to notify the company of your cancellation and one that I'm afraid you may well pay dearly for. If you can stretch to going on the holiday legally that is probably the best solution.

I would do what eggchaser suggests. Or pretend you did not get the tickets at all.

I would bear in mind that most companies only accept cancellations in writing, and you stand a cat in hells chance of pulling that one off without proof.

I hate low-deposit holidays, they really seem to cause problems.

i work for first choice travel agents, and when we do a low deposit, if people dont pay the balance of the deposit, we send them 2 letters and call them up to chase a few times.
If we cant get hold of them, the holiday gets automatically cancelled at some stage by head office and a legal letter gets sent to the customer from head office for the balance of the deposit.

However, with direct holidays being an online company, i would have thought that when you do a low deposit, they automatically take the balance of the deposit from your card on the due date? I may be wrong though.
But, they wouldnt do that with the main holiday balance when thats due, and would cancel the holiday automatically if you didnt pay the final holiday balance by that due date 8 wks before.

its all very strange.

i would ring and say you cancelled it and why have you got tkts.
Also. this may be daft, but make sure they havnt automatically debited the balance from your card.

let us know what they say if u ring them

Hi

We booked with first choice on the low deposit and never received anything about paying the remainder. A year later we got a standard thank you for your booking letter with terms and conditions but still no request for further payment. At this point I got worried and rang them incase they cancelled us and customer services couldn't understand why we had never been asked for the remainder and there was nothing on the system other than the balence due by date.

Decided at that point to pay regardless and be safe, but just goes to show there are no hard and fast rules. Mistakes can and do happen, but at the end of the day my attitude was that if you know the rules, ignore them and something goes wrong you only have yourself to blame.

Pam

We booked with Direct Holidays in January this year using the low deposit scheme. We did it by telephone because we wanted some options which were not available online and the person we spoke to gave us the date to pay the deposit balance and the date to pay the final balance. They also said that no reminders would be sent and payments would not be deducted automatically - the onus was on us to pay by the two dates otherwise the holiday could be cancelled. If the holiday was cancelled we would still be liable for the deposit balance. We tried to pay the balances online but there was a message saying that online payment was not possible due to the merger with Thomas Cook. We made sure that we paid the two amounts by telephone a few days before they were due just in case and we received an updated invoice both times.

This situation is of course a bit different to the OP and it is difficult to know what the current status of the holiday is according to Direct. You used to be able to go to the Direct Holidays website and enter your booking reference and get the status but this may also have changed since the take over. The invoices we received were called first, second, third invoice. Was a first invoice issued which would show all the booking details?

Just an update on this

Sent the tickets back at the beginning of the week. They rang yesterday and said there was an outstanding balance told them i had sent them back they just asked if i wanted to cancel it then told them yes got a cancellation e-mail and the cancellation fee was just the deposit so hopefully i will not have to pay anymore.

Phew, bet that's a relief for you. Seems they simply made an error and have realised that as you didn't pay the balance at the required time then it should have been cancelled.

I think they did they seems a few cases like this.
Have booked to go on my hols later in the year and to a better hotel so all is not lost.

Should have been fling out on the one they sent tickets for today but never mind

Not sure if Direct holidays operate on the same basis as Thomson but Thomson point out that if they don't receive your balance by the due date (no reminder letters), your holiday will automatically be cancelled. This therefore suggests that if you wish to cancel there is no need to inform them as they will cancel once they don't receive your balance. They have obviously made a mistake in issuing your tickets and I would therefore point this out to them as soon as possible. IMO there's no way you'll get away with going on this holiday without paying.