hi....I dont believe they can get away with doing this ....if you buy a package you have bought a whole holiday from a company....it is the same as buying a product or a service....if the people they employ to provide it cant provide it ....it is still their responsibility as they have employed someone else to provide on thier behalf.....and need to give back what you have paid for the product or service you cant recieve....tweetie

I never did understand why, if an airline couldn't provide its service due to extreme weather (i.e. outside of its control) it was liable for compensation.

hi ...if money is taken for a product or service which then cannot be provided the relevant amount of money should then be returned....it is for the company who have offered to provide the service ect to insure against any losses incured when it fails to supply something it has accepted a fee for...

If you ordered 3loaves of bread from a bakery and paid for them...and a storm at sea sunk the ship carrying the flour for every bakery in the country ....so not only the bakery who had taken payment for your 3 loaves of bread but every other bakery was unable to supply your loaves....you would expect and get a refund.....the storm at sea wasnt your bakers fault

If you employed a man to dig over your garden....and pay him to do so....and a hurricain blows down a tree that falls on your man ....breaking his back ...and he would never again be able to do the job you had paid him to do...you would be entitled to a refund...the hurricain was not your workmans fault

The thing that is usually a factor is that we expect to pay ...exchange money for service or goods ...after we recieve them.

Maybe we should not be expected to pay for flights ect untill we check in to board or after we have flown.....it looks like payment is expected for flights ect wether or not they can be supp;ied....this is not an even playing field............we can loose our money if we turn up to late for a check in....it would not matter if a flood had blocked off our route to the airport....the flood would have been out of our control.......
tweetie

There's a lot in what you say Tweetie Pie but this does cost implications - whether it's us that takes out our own insurance to cover such eventualities as 'force majeure' or the companies take out insurance or build up contingency funds for such payouts and for which we then pay for by higher prices. In the examples you cite, the shipping company would have paid a hefty premium for maritime insurance and the gardener would possibly have taken out insurance to cover him for loss of earnings etc if incapacitated but it's more likely that the cost would be borne by your house insurer because it's usually the householders responsibility if trees on their property cause damage to either people or their property. In your second scenario, getting a refund from a man injured by a tree blown down on your property would be the least of your worries. The respective legal liabilities in such a case would extend far beyond just whether you were entitled to a refund or not!

But seriously, airline pricing systems are based on the maximum utilisation of the planes, crews still have to be paid whether the flight takes off or not, the cost of purchasing the plane in the first place etc still has to be re-couped whether it flies or not. In the days before mass travel, airlines operated on bigger profit margins and could absorb costs in ways that is out of the question now. I can't help thinking that we, the travelling public, are also partly to blame because we have got used to paying less and less in real terms over the years for air travel. Yes, many airlines and certainly the big TOs do make a lot of money out us collectively but not that much out of each us individually.

SM

Well said SMa , some very good points raised , and like you said us consumers and compensation culture are partly to blame !

hi all....there is a difference between compensation and the return of monies for products /services not recieved....if you ordered a new settee from a furniture store and paid for it knowing there would be a delay of 6wks before delivery (this is a common practice) but the manufacturer burnt down or went bankrupt...you would expect your money back that you would have already paid when your settee was not delivered on the agreed date and would not be delivered at all.......that is return of monies for services/products not recieved.......

Compensation would be for the loss of the pleasure of sitting on it...or having to sit on the floor as you had thrown out your old settee to make the space for the new settee coming....tweetie

if you ordered a new settee from a furniture store and paid for it knowing there would be a delay of 6wks before delivery (this is a common practice) but the manufacturer burnt down or went bankrupt...you would expect your money back that you would have already paid when your settee was not delivered on the agreed date and would not be delivered at all.......that is return of monies for services/products not recieved.......

Unfortunately, whilst consumer law has given us a lot more rights in our dealings with traders we are not always going to get our money back if goods are services aren't supplied. A lot depends on the reasons why they haven't been. For example, if the company went bankrupt you would only be guaranteed to receive your money back if it had been paid into a separate holding account for clients/customers money where it was held until the goods were supplied. If it has just been paid into a general account then you are just one more unsecured creditor and the banks will get their share before you do. This is exactly the position that a lot of Focus customers who ordered online before the chain went belly-up are in right now. The private equity company that owned the chain had taken out huge loans using the business as security against the credit whilst they took equity out of the company. And now all those bank loans will get repaid before customers who haven't yet received goods they ordered will. Unfair, YES, illegal, unfortunately not.

Professionals like solicitors are obliged to keep any clients money that they are holding in a separate account and to take out insurance against possible insolvency. Some good retailers do too until your goods are actually dispatched to you but the latter are not required by law to do so. I know that this sounds unfair but just because you have paid for something and it isn't supplied doesn't always mean that you are going to get your money back. However, morally wrong it is the law places the interests of secured creditors eg the banks who have given the business a loan, over the rights of unsecured creditors such as the hapless customers caught up in a bankruptcy case.

This is another reason why, even if I have the cash sitting in my bank account, I always use a credit rather debit card for any on-line purchases, and especially for anything that has to paid for well in advance up front because my issuing bank stands a much better chance of getting the money back than I do. And why incidentally I ordered my last sofa from a company that only required paying on delivery.

And if the manufacturer burnt down you have no real guarantee either unless they had insurance in place too in order to enable them to find new premises and replace supplies etc. If they didn't and the losses in the fire propel them into insolvency as a result then again, you're just one more unsecured creditor.

SM

hi....thats why I pay everything with a credit card....tweetie