What a nightmare for you! I'd be on the phone to them demanding a full refund if I were you. Surely if they can't provide you with the hotel you booked then they should offer you a complete refund!?! I hope you get this sorted.

I hope so too! They say giving me a refund for the hotel is enough - flights are separate. But since the hotel was roughly £300, and flights £600, it's a little unfair...
I want to complain to ABTA but it's 50p a minute to do so. Why is everyone out to con us??

The charges went through separately.

I'm afraid that this is probably the reason why they won't offer you a full refund - you didn't buy a package but have separate contracts for each component. I've never used Alpharooms so I;m not familiar with their terms and conditions but is very likely that they make this clear - have you checked?

The original, nice hotel still has availability, another thing I don't understand.

Is this at the same price as you paid? Or higher? If it's more (as I suspect it might( have you asked them how much it would cost to transfer to the original hotel? It might be worth paying the extra so that you can still make use of the flights.

There are moves afoot to change the regulations so that people who buy 'dynamic' packages (which I think is what you have done) are covered in the same way as those who buy traditional packages but for the moment, however morally wrong it might feel, I think you'll find that they are acting within thiei T&Cs and more crucially within the law. Your best bet is probably to either appeal to their sense of fairplay and try and negotiate a reasonable compromise or else take the refund and re-book a hotel because at the moment I think that the only thing you are legally entitled to is a refund of the hotel costs and they've agreed to do this.

If you contact Simpson Millar (details in the banner at the top of the page) they could give you a more authorative legal opinion.

SM

I want to complain to ABTA but it's 50p a minute to do so. Why is everyone out to ???? us??

Why does everyone want to ring up - is it because they like the music?

You can complain to ABTA for a lot less than 50 pence a minute. Forget telephone calls. Emails are always dodgy due to them getting diverted into spam filters and being lost - write them a letter. Send it recorded delivery.

fwh

I wanted to phone to get it sorted as quickly as possible, but sending a letter is a good idea.
I've found a decent hotel for £300ish with Thomas Cook or through the hotel's website, hopefully they won't trick me either.
The conundrum I have now - does accepting the refund imply acceptance of the situation, or can I possibly get compensation or at least an apology afterwards?

They've acknowledged that there was a problem by agreeing to refund you - I doubt that you'll get any more of an apology than that. As for compensation, what would you be looking for in the way of compensation? You'd need to demonstrate that you were out of pocket and it appears that you wouldn't be if you've been able to find a comparable hotel for the same price.

By the way, I'm a bit confused by your earlier reference to the hotel being about 20% of the cost - was the total cost £900 (£600+300) or £750 (£600+150)? It the first then the hotel cost was really approx 33% of the total - or they've already compensated you by giving you a £300 refund worth 40% of the original cost.

Either way, if it was me and I could get the hotel I wanted or similar for what Alphrooms have refunded then I would just take it and get on with re-booking and then look forward to my holiday. Prolonging the issue won't necessarily get you any better an outcome and personally I couldn't be bothered with the extra hassle. But, yes, accepting the refund does mean that you have accepted the situation - not just implied it - and they will regard this as settlement of the problem.

Only you can decide whether this is something that you want to pursue further but first you really must check whether, when you ticked the box to say that you accepted their T&Cs that you weren't also accepting that this wasn't a traditional package and that the flights and hotel bookings constitued separate contracts with 3rd parties. Because if this is the case then there really is no point in pursuing it because acceptance of those T&Cs was acceptance that if the flight was cancelled you wouldn't get a refund of the hotel cost and vice-versa.

SM

SMa wrote:

They've acknowledged that there was a problem by agreeing to refund you - I doubt that you'll get any more of an apology than that. As for compensation, what would you be looking for in the way of compensation? You'd need to demonstrate that you were out of pocket and it appears that you wouldn't be if you've been able to find a comparable hotel for the same price.

By the way, I'm a bit confused by your earlier reference to the hotel being about 20% of the cost - was the total cost £900 (£600+300) or £750 (£600+150)? It the first then the hotel cost was really approx 33% of the total - or they've already compensated you by giving you a £300 refund worth 40% of the original cost.

Either way, if it was me and I could get the hotel I wanted or similar for what Alphrooms have refunded then I would just take it and get on with re-booking and then look forward to my holiday. Prolonging the issue won't necessarily get you any better an outcome and personally I couldn't be bothered with the extra hassle. But, yes, accepting the refund does mean that you have accepted the situation - not just implied it - and they will regard this as settlement of the problem.

Only you can decide whether this is something that you want to pursue further but first you really must check whether, when you ticked the box to say that you accepted their T&Cs that you weren't also accepting that this wasn't a traditional package and that the flights and hotel bookings constitued separate contracts with 3rd parties. Because if this is the case then there really is no point in pursuing it because acceptance of those T&Cs was acceptance that if the flight was cancelled you wouldn't get a refund of the hotel cost and vice-versa.

SM

Fair enough - I'm going to take the refund and book a hotel which is only something like 7 euros more expensive. It's not as good a hotel but I'll be happy enough as far as I can tell.
I'm sure I did click a box saying a change of hotel's fine, but it was the impression I'm getting that I was NEVER going to get the original hotel (there's still availability, the difference between hotels 1 and 2 is massive, and I've found on the internet that they've done it a lot before) that's annoying me - don't like being a fool! Guess I'll just have to learn for next time.