Much will depend on whether a price was quoted before you paid for the holiday. If the initial information you were given was just that you would have to pay something extra and the £11 quote came after you paid it isn't really part of the contract. If they said £11 before you decided to confirm the booking then you would have grounds to argue. Easyjet don't actually quote any prices before you go through the booking process.

It is a problem with the small operators who use the low cost carriers that they can't get the luggage thing right. There would be nothing to stop them including 1 bag each as part of the package price.

The advice Thomson's shop gave may not be 100% accurate. Even if you could not prebook it with Cresta, once you had paid Cresta they could have given you the flight booking reference to allow you to prebook the bags directly with easyjet online (which would have cost much less than the airport charge). But again this comes down to how Cresta work so what Thomson might be saying is that you can't prebook because Cresta aren't organised enough!

No expert

But I would have thought that you have entered in to a contract with Cresta through their booking agent who in this case was the Thomson travel agent. You have an invoice from their agent which is printed evidence of your contract and this shows that the agreed baggage charge was £11 per bag each way, this then makes Thomson as the retailer (agent) responsible for the additional charges and they should refund them.

How you manage to get them to refund the additional costs is a different matter.
I would start of with a written letter to the shop asking them to refund the amount within a stipulated period.
A letter to Thomson head office would also be a good idea telling them how dissatisfied you are with the service and inaccurate information supplied by their shop and also mention that you were miss sold the holiday.

TUI Travel House
Crawley Business Quarter
Fleming Way
Crawley
West Sussex, UK
RH10 9QL

Thanks all . Yes the £11 was clearly stated in writing at the time of booking and we paid the deposit based on the invoice showing that figure as a footnote . I will have a go but sure everyone will disclaim liability and we will get nowhere . The lady at Nice airport had clearly come across this situation before . We also asked the Thomson shop if they could give us a booking ref so we could get it cheaper but they were unable to help .
Not very satisfactory at all .

Stanley

Sounds like a woefully inept way to run a business. I've looked on their website and it links to this page (not updated for around a year) http://www.bctagent.co.uk/anitenextpage.asp?p=SPCINFO_LOWCOSTCARRIERFEES&xml=TOUROPERATORID%208061&s=1140624736 which doesn't quote prices for easyjet.

The fact remains that if they sent you your documents 14 days in advance as they promise and the easyjet booking reference (they random group of letters and numbers) was shown then you could have saved a lot of money by paying for the luggage online in advance - and you should have been told that.

As you flew from Edinburgh does this mean the shop was in Scotland? If the contract was signed in Scotland then the next bit may not be 100% applicable but is worth reading, you're just going to have to battle using Common Law rather than Statute.
http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/fact-sheets/page38337.html explains that a supplier of a service must use reasonable care and skill. A company selling holidays using easyjet but not knowing how to pay for your on bags on easyjet sounds like a lack of both of those!

And their T&C's can't have a clause to cover up for their mistakes and failure to comply with the above - see http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/fact-sheets/page38609.html for your protection!

I took our complaint to Thomson travel shop in mid August , who sold us holiday , and they said they had passed it on to appropriate dept who took on average a month to reply . Its now early Oct and - surprise surprise - nothing .
So my question - is there a " reasonable " time in consumer law after which the customer is considered to have won their case by default ?
I am thinking of a recorded delivery letter to that effect .

Stanley

I don't think there is a time cutoff for winning a case in English or Scottish law but there is an accepted limit for reasonable time for giving a proper response and that is 28 days. This applies both in ABTA guidelines and what a County Court (in England) would accept as giving them a chance to respond. But I'd bet that Thomson will say they are giving Cresta 28 days so their repsonse to you will take longer - although they would be pushing their luck to ask for 56 days!!!

But guess where you went slightly wrong? Your first approach should have have been in a recorded delivery letter so that you had a documented date for the start of the process. I would have sent two complaints, one to Cresta because their pricing info was completely wrong and one to Thomson because their staff should have warned you to prebook the bags once you got the tickets rather than pay at the airport.

This is the third complaint in as many days that I've seen about agents not giving the correct baggage charge advice to customers booked on low cost carriers.

Phoned Cresta who said my complaint should be addressed to the Thomson Travel Shop who sold us the holiday . !! Nothing to do with them . Referred me to their website which says Easyjet baggage payable at check in in line with carriers rates .
Thomson say Cresta have to resolve the issue as their terms and conditions apply .
Tearing hair out and have given up !!

Cresta normally take ages to respond to complaints, I know someone who had to wait 4 months for a response and wasn't given any compensation
I think there has been a lot of confusion and errors with regards to Crestas luggage allowance whe using Easyjet flights so I don't think you're alone
You'll probably find that Cresta will blame TUI and TUI will blame Cresta.
I'm going away with Cresta next month using Easyjet flights and they have added on 1 checked in bag for me at the time of booking at a cost of £16. Perhaps the Easyjet charge went up and they didn't notify Cresta straight away? The agent should have told you at the time of booking that the £11 quoted was subject to change. I would query why they wouldn't let you add on luggage at the time of booking because you defintely can with Cresta.
They would make it so much easier for themselves if they automatically included luggage. Flexibletrips do and they are part of Thomas Cook as well.
Good Luck!

Stanley

You have done exactly what they hoped you'd do which is why they drag things out. I hope at the very least you won't be using Thomson again!

They seem willing to take the risk even for being in breach of ABTA guidelines
In this type of situation , who is actually responsible for dealing with a claim ?

Basically, you are! ABTA are the agents trade organisation. You've no claim on their bonding scheme and your case won't cause major embarrasment for the industry - so they might not too bothered. I'd have gone for Thomson on the grounds that if you'd booked direct via the Cresta website there was something (even if it wasn't 100% accurate) that would have sounded warning bells. So Cresta have made an attempt to be honest. Thomson on the other hand have been useless and it's really their failure that left you in the dark. I'm not sure of the legal position in Scotland, the English courts like you to make 3 bona fide attempts to sort it out before going to them. So, you've been back to the shop, raised it verbally and got nowhere. That's one attempt. You wrote to them and got an inadequte reply after a long delay. That's 2 attempts. You could write to ABTA, complain that that Thomson gave you inaccurate info when they sold the holiday (a fact backed up by Cresta) and that they won't help. Even if ABTA refuse to get involved it counts as the third attempt. At this point in England you could start County Court action but you'd have to get advice about Scotland, try Citizens Advice.

I had a thread some months ago about baggage charges incurred in excess of the amount notified to us by the Thomson travel shop in writing at the time of booking (£11/bag each way ) . The excess was about £45 .
After a letter to Thomson MD , I received a phone call last night from an arrogant woman telling me it was our fault at check in for paying the higher rate , it is Easy Jets responsibilty and not Thomsons . We did query the price at EZY check in and was told that Thomson were not correct and unless we paid the price demanded we would not be allowed to board .
This snotty woman made my blood boil , when I tried the " next holiday with Thomas Cook " tactic she just laughed .
Thomson totally ignored my complaint for months . Is there any point going to ABTA or a small claims court ?

Stanley

Just to let you all know, Cresta now automatically include 1 checked in bag per person with any booking.