Hays steps in to acquire Freedom Direct assets

Hays Travel has acquired fellow North East travel company Freedom Direct Holidays after it ceased trading.

Hays has taken on the intellectual property rights of Freedom Direct, including customer database and bookings, web addresses and URLs for an undisclosed sum

The travel agency has pledged to assist former customers of Freedom Direct Holidays with the administration and handling of their bookings.

It is also in the process of offering employment to all staff members who lost jobs and are seeking work after Freedom Direct folded.

Hays Travel managing director John Hays said: "We were very sad to hear that Freedom Direct Holidays had ceased trading as it had a very good reputation and an excellent calibre of staff.

"Hays Travel was fortunately in a position to be able to purchase its assets.

"We have also been able to offer the Freedom Direct Holidays staff alternative employment as part of the Hays Travel team."

Nick Jackson, former managing director of Freedom Direct Holidays, and Grant Lawson, former head of sales, have both joined Hays Travel.

They will continue to manage the other Freedom Direct staff joining the company, which includes the majority of the customer services team, web and marketing team and call centre staff.

They will be based at Hays Travel offices in Ridley Place, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Vine Place, Sunderland.

The Freedom Direct Holidays office, based on Gosforth Park Avenue, is not included in the deal and is available for sale.

Mike Pott, recovery and insolvency partner at RMT Accountants and Business Advisors, said: "The sale of the Freedom Direct Holidays business to Hays Travel is a great result for both creditors and customers.

"RMT has a long and successful track record of providing advice within the industry and has been working hard in the interim period to assist customers as much as possible.

"Linda Farish and Anthony Josephs from RMT have been appointed joint administrators as of 23rd April 2009, and will now be dealing with the realisation of the remaining assets and the claims of suppliers to Freedom Direct Holidays."


With permission from Travelmole

I have spoken to Thomson Airways who have confirmed that they will not be dealing with Hays over the booking and I am still to send them bank statements so they can claim the money from ATOL. Still a mess but I guess that is understandable but from thinking I had a holiday, I still have the flight to sort myself with Thomson, and Med Hotels still refusing to honour the holiday and trying to get me to cancel and rebook asap.

Spoke with Hays today who advised that they will be assinting customers as much as they can, bu they will not be taking over responsibilty for paying any balances owed to accomadation amd flight companies , which is understandable

I have had to repay my accomadation again with Hotels 4U so I spoke with ABTA about what I could do their reply detailed below is of no help at all really and I quote

Thank you for your email.

As previously advised - if you have a retail booking (that is, a booking that does not fit in with paragraph one of our previous emails) then the Hotels4U booking must be honoured. However, if Hotels4U refuse to honour your booking and you paid FDHL by credit card you should contact your card provider for a refund under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.
If you paid FDHL by any other method you will need to take you own legal advice regarding Hotels4U, to either have your booking honoured or to obtain a refund from them for the cost of your booking.

Unfortunately we would not be able to consider a claim for you under the ABTA bond. Where a Travel Agent goes into administration the booking should continue with the tour operator under Agency Law, even where the tour operator has not received the monies paid to the agent. Any monies not paid to the tour operator would be claimed by the tour operator from the bond provided by the failed agent. As the agent is not honouring the booking the financial protection does not allow us to consider a claim for the loss you have incurred.

Regards

ABTA Claims

Even though I paid the holiday in full by creidt card, FD paid the flights to Goldtrail around £500 and tokk off another payment for the accomadation of around £50, so almost certainly I will not be covered by credit card as the balance was under £100

In one sense Im lucky I have the holiday still and I am only £50 down but hey £50 is £50

I will maybe try trading standards and try that route to recover the £50

Hope others are having more luck

Stewart

Hi Stewart and other,

Firstly, this whole protection thing is a complete mess. As an agent myself i am glad we don't have to deal with ABTA as from what everyone else has said and persoanl experience, useless and don't have a clue.

There is a huge debate going on within the industry regarding the XL collapse and how ATOL have dealt with it and then to propose putting up the Atol Levy to £3 per passenger to cover the losses they have made. Apparently ATOL would not have the available fund to cope with another major loss until next year !! without having to have government help.

The agency i am with is bonded through the Travel Trust Association meaning that all monies taken are put into the trust account and can only be released on the following - flights are protected through an ATOL member therefore payment for flights can be released to the operator as normal.
For accommodation only bookings, money is not released until the customer has travelled meaning that should my agency collapse (god forbid) then at least the customers holiday can carry on as normal as the funds are there in the trust account which is regulated by the Travel Trust.

ABTA causes themselves trouble and because it became as a household name it has stuck in peoples mind, ABTA stopped protection for some holiday components a while ago and i wish there was a website whereby everyone could go to and see exactly what is and what isn't covered and how the different organisations work as for me, ABTA is merely a name now trying to make it out to be something it isn't.

Sorry to go on and for anybody that has been caught up in the mess whilst at the same time, i hope that ABTA get a big slap and wake up to what their organisation actually does, not a lot !!

Rant over

hi

i have spent some 7 hours trying to sort both my holidays out yesterday. my first one to egypt has flights with thomson and hotel with youtravel.com. after speaking to youtravel, who will not homour the booking but i can keep the booking if i pay again, £961. thomson say they will honour the flight and they will claim the money back from atol, i only have this over the phone and not in writing from them. i have had to send them all the booking confirmation and bank statements. im now concerned that if i pay the hotel again and then thomson ask for the flight cost again. abta are useless with their help saying that the hotel was book seperately to the flights so the hotel should be covered by them and in the next breath say its not covered by them. atol said last week that if i paid again the original hotel booking this could invalidate my claim for the hotel refund. its all most annoying as freedom direct had my money last month, £2600 and have not paid the flights or hotel. something more should be done to stop this from happening all the time.
my second booking was booked on april 11th, luckily the flights were paid in full direct to the flight company but hotels4u have cancelled the hotel booking. i have only paid £60 so not that bad as although the booking paperwork says it was atol covered, i dont think it will be as they lost their atol bond at the end of march. this means that i wont be able to claim this money back as it needs to be more than £100 to do a chargeback. freedom direct should not be allowed to get away with taking money when they knew they wer not ment to be doing the booking cause of their atol bond being cancelled. it seems that freedom took everyones money and ran with it.
has anyone had their tickets from thomson after saying they will claim the money back on your behalve?

For ALL *****IMPORTANT*********

CAA have updated thier website with more clear information in regards to making a claim. They have also added different SCENARIOS of the bookings FD made and who can calim and how.

Dan,

If your booking were made as a package and if it applies to SCENARIO 4 on the CAA website then you have a valid calim. My bookings were made as a package, where the flights are booked with KISS Flights and Accomm & Transf with MEDHOTELS. On my invioce it clearly says "Freedom Pacakage Holiday" and proctected under the ATOL conditions.

Kiss flights are honouring my bookings and tickets will be posted 7-10 days to departure (this applies to all the Flight companies). I am still waiting for them as my dep date is 19/May/09.

Medhotels have not honoured the bookings for accomm & transfers and cancelled the reservation made by FD. I have to rebooked my accomm&Transfr and in process of making a claim to ATOL.

Shaz9

Will you please post a link to the CAA page that you are referring to. I have been on CAA website and cants ee anything about the different scenarios

Stewart

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=1052&pagetype=90&pageid=10633

Thats the link you require

what a mess,its cost me the same amount in phone bill as the holiday's cost,sick and tired of been told a pack of lies.Abta stand for nothin in my eyes dont want to help in any way,as for Hotels4 u they need closing down the way they speak to customers my original accomadation was £550 with freeedom then Hotels4u wanted £712 for the same room? How are they allowed to do this? Was told buy Hays on sat that the hotel was ok ....then on monday its not there not going to honour it..so i re-booked with another firm for £444 same room..same hotel ...same day.Have tried to claim money from the bank (dispute claim ) but they need a letter from Abta ..who will not send a letter as they dont?Im lost to be honest as to who i can claim the original amount from,as my husband said "Its gone" lets just make the of the holiday and learn buy what's happend. caz

link for CAA website re: FD is the one Kimi posted. Thanks Kimi

Cas, Try emailing ABTA on ABTAClaims@cegagroup.com and should you get a reply, use that email for your Credit Card company as a (-ve response)...hope this help

cazclio35

Totally sympathise with you as I am in exactly the same position. ABTA have advised that Hotels4U should honour bookings but they are not in the least bit interested. From their perspective FD did not pay them so they want their money. I advised ABTA of this but they were just as useless

I am lucky I only had to pay around £50 for my accomadation which i have had to repay again. I have asked ABTA, hotels4U, ATOL and the CAA who i should make a claim against but none of them seem to know the answer.

trading standards might be one option, but the way FD operated was seeming very complicated which has added to the confusion.

I will also be registering a complaint via ABTA about hotels4U as they should have honoured the agreement under their ABTA bond

I go on holiday in just over 2 weeks and after this carry on boy do i need it

What now worries me is that perhaps more people will now only consider using the big 2, Thomson and Thomas Cook as they are worried about using smaller independant companies. The big 2 already dominate the market and they ahve an almost cartel on holidays. Teir prices are already considerably higher than the smaller companies, which will almost certainly be bad news for customers especially those on a budget

Hope you enjoy your holiday

Stewart

did anyone pay FD any amounts after april 1st,? if so can you please post the info on this forum

Thanks

thanks for the help and advice from you all just been able to talk others is a help and knowing im not on my own,hope everyone gets thing sorted and have an extra special holiday caz

smc4761 wrote:

cazclio35

Totally sympathise with you as I am in exactly the same position. ABTA have advised that Hotels4U should honour bookings but they are not in the least bit interested. From their perspective FD did not pay them so they want their money. I advised ABTA of this but they were just as useless

I am lucky I only had to pay around £50 for my accomadation which i have had to repay again. I have asked ABTA, hotels4U, ATOL and the CAA who i should make a claim against but none of them seem to know the answer.

trading standards might be one option, but the way FD operated was seeming very complicated which has added to the confusion.

I will also be registering a complaint via ABTA about hotels4U as they should have honoured the agreement under their ABTA bond

I go on holiday in just over 2 weeks and after this carry on boy do i need it

What now worries me is that perhaps more people will now only consider using the big 2, Thomson and Thomas Cook as they are worried about using smaller independant companies. The big 2 already dominate the market and they ahve an almost cartel on holidays. Teir prices are already considerably higher than the smaller companies, which will almost certainly be bad news for customers especially those on a budget

Hope you enjoy your holiday

Stewart

I do agree with you to a certain extent about the cartel that Thomson and Thomas Cook now have and I don't think the monopolies and mergers people should have allowed the 4 big companys to come down to two. But that is what we are left with.

However one of the reasons that people like Freedom Direct went bust was because they were putting such a small mark up on their holidays they ceased to be able to run a viable business.

I'm sure someone in the travel industry mentioned this earlier in the thread. They could see from how Freedom Direct operated that the margins they were using were untenable, so its just a disaster waiting to happen.

That isn't good for competition in the market either especially in a recession.

aprd68 - I payed the full amount of my holiday on the 11th April - 5 days before they went bust. As you can imagine - not impressed. My flights were with thomas cook and my hotel with Hotels4U. Thomas Cook have said my flight is fine, however like alot of other people Hotels4U not honoring it. I have now been told that i can still go on holiday if i pay the £720 again for accomadation (which i have already fully paid once). and there is no way of getting this money back. However if i dont pay the £720 i cant go on the holiday which means i lose the £1170 i paid. What a joke!

I unfortunatly paid on my debit card and the bank are saying they are unable to help and i have also spoke to ABTA which are completley useless.

which bank you with? Im with Barclays and got to send everything off to them and (just hoping they can help)but the way our luck's going just sit and wait caz

Im with nationwide!! found out this evening that because i paid by visa - there is such thing called Visa Chargeback - where this is a possibility that you can claim the money back - but be warned - i dont think the banks like to do this and you have to really push to get the documentation. So now i guess like you say - its a waiting game!!!

Same here thats what i was told,i also paid buy visa.The mood ive been in this week God help them...... lol ...,ill fight tooth and nail to try and get this money back,so if they want a fight they can have one.

caz