It is common for airlines to sit people who aren't having meals together towards the back and personally, I would have asked about this before paying out but I do accept that not everybody knows this.

However, assuming that your holiday is this year and and only recently booked, I would have thought that the most likely explanation is that others who booked earlier have already taken the pick of the seats. Whether Thomson should have advised you of this is a different matter but paying this fee was the only way of guaranteeing that you got two seats together and whether that is worth paying £24 for is something that only you can decide. Not taking up this option does mean that you would run the risk of not being seated together - again only you can say whether that is a risk you'd have been prepared to take in return for saving £24. I'm not sure that you'll get very far with this - Thomson could well argue that at barely 5 weeks to departure you shold have realised that there wouldn't be many seats still available if everybody has been able to select their seats 24 hrs after booking.

I've recently experienced something similar booking a domestic flight with FlyBe for my two nieces at relatively short notice. As the youngest is still only 16 and has the occasional epileptic seizure I willingly paid exactly the same fee in order to ensure that they did get seated together on both their outbound and return journeys even though it looked as if the flight was relatively empty because I didn't want to take the chance that the flight might be fullish after all and it was just that most people had decided not to pre-book their seats. If they were towards the back of the check-in queue they might have ended up being separated and I decided that £24 was worth paying for the peace of mind.

SM

Hmmm. Jet2 allow you to see the seats available, select your seats both out and inbound & then it's added to the cost of your flight.

Same with Monarch, you can see available seats before you fork out your money...

If you had known that the flight was nearly full and there was only a few seats left, would this have not made it more important to book seats together rather than run the risk of being seperated?

Well we flew with thomsons in May of this year. We were sat at the front and didnt have an in flight meal

Most people that were eating seemed to be sat in the middle of the aeroplane

We had already been allocated 2 of these seats,

Perhaps these were automatically selected when you logged in or when you made the purchase to select your seat were allocated?

Mark

Most of these 'choose your seat' systems do seem to work the way Mark suggests - it offers you a suggested seat choice on the basis of the most suitable out of those that are still available and you can either accept them or choose alternatives from those that are still available. However, if you haven't yet paid for them, or don't proceed with booking them then this doesn't mean that they have been allocated to you. If you don't accept them, then these same seats are likely to be offered to the next person who logs in or makes a booking after you.

SM

You can prebook seats with Thomson 90 days before departure if you ring or 60 days if you go online. As Mark says the computer has already 'selected' seats but you can change them if you wish. With a late booking it is highly likely that a lot of the seats will have been prebooked given that a lot people prefer to be sat together.
I'm not sure but I don't think seats are blocked off from people that don't order a meal. A computer allocates seats the day before departure taking into account all seats that have been prebooked.
As SMa says, if you don't book the seats they will still be there for someone else to book.
The £24 you paid is so that you can sit together but it also give you seat selection at no extra charge.
Presumably you wanted to sit together as you paid the money, and that is the only way of knowing that you will be.

With only 5 weeks to departure it will be the case that many of the seats have been booked as the service is very popular, where you can sit also depends whether meals are included in your package which i agree should be made clearer, its a different system to Thomas Cook which allows non meal passengers to sit anywhere however Thomson dont use an inventory list so all passengers sit behind a certain row without meals.

I would think that most of the seats have probably gone as i pre-booked my seats with thomson for my hol at end of september about 4 weeks ago and there wasnt a lot of choice then. They only gave me a few options and all were at the back so i pressume that was because we havent bought meals on the plane either. i also had to do mine over the phone as they wont let you pre book online if travelling with an infant.

At least you know you are going to be sat together as the only year my parent didnt pay to sit together they ended up at seperate ends of the plane.

The £24 fee is to guarantee seats together which they have honoured, if you read the wording it actually says pick your seat numbers for free !!!