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Strangely I have been in almost the exact same position with Thomas Cook, I found a superb deal which I did assume was wrongly priced for that particular hotel and the same as you I booked the holiday.

The following day I received a call to say that the hotel had been priced incorrectly and unless I wished to pay the additional cost my booking would be cancelled which it was as I wasn't going to pay the extra.

I contacted my local Trading Standards office and they informed me that as it was obviously an error TC were well within their rights to cancel my booking and not honour the price advertised.

Similarly I was also given a voucher for £100 which after taking advice I accepted and used for another holiday.

Graham

Its the bit that says an "obvious mistake" that I'm arguing, what is obvious to them may not be to us mere mortals that assume we have finally found that bargain holiday.

Hmm so they send you a £100 voucher that you need to use against one of their holidays which, means you end up giving them your custom............ So their error swings into being in their favour.....

I went trawling through the old emails that are stored in Virgin Media to see if I could find anything regarding my booking and it was from over 2 years ago and I also asked ABTA and this was their responce at that time -

The first thing to say is that the tour operator cannot insist on the client paying the higher price. Equally, however, the client is unlikely to be able to insist that the operator provide the holiday at the lower price. The most likely result will be that the tour operator will cancel the booking and the client will receive a refund of any monies paid.

In these cases the first thing to do is look at when the contract comes into effect. This will be stated in the tour operator's booking conditions but is usually when the tour operator issues their confirmation invoice (not when it is received).

If the contract has not come into effect then the tour operator simply returns any money paid and that is the end of it.

If the contract has come into effect, the next thing to check is when the balance due date is. If the balance due date has not been reached, the tour operator is entitled, under the ABTA Code of Conduct and, usually, under the booking conditions, to cancel the booking and give a refund of monies paid without any other reason.

If the balance due date is passed, the tour operator will not be able to cancel the booking but is likely to argue that the contract has been entered into on the basis of a mistake. If this is correct then the contract will be void and the client will be entitled to a refund but not to any further compensation, nor to have the holiday at the lower price.

If a holiday, never mind a longhaul one, coming in at £22.98 for 2 isn't an obvious mistake to all and sundry I don't know what is, especially as the 'up to £300' off is applicable to Summer 2014 holidays, not Winter 2013/14.

It was the £300 off in big writing that i spotted that lead me to click through the links, you are right on that fact and having reread it does say summer 2014. Its interesting that you know exactly what price i paid as I haven't stated that ??
The fact that Thomas cook previous had offers as low as £251 to Goa led us to believe that this was an genuine offer. We assumed that there may only be 1 or 2 holiday's at this price to entice the customers in and the fact that it was advertised for 12 hours on their site is also an indication that it was a real offer.

An obvious rule of thumb when buying anything is that if it looks too good to be true then it usually is. I don't blame you for giving it a go and seeing if the booking would be honoured but just like all those people who tried to buy Reebok trainers for just the postage, surely you realised that this was a mistake and couldn't possibly be an intentional offer to fly 2 people to Goa for that sort of price? Are you saying Irishwales, that it never occurred to you that it had to be a mistake if they were offering a 3 week longhaul holiday for just over £10 per head? I think that you are in the same position as many found themselves in with the recent Reebok trainer fiasco and there will be little that you can do about this other than accept the refund.

SM

irishwales wrote:

It was the £300 off in big writing that i spotted that lead me to click through the links, you are right on that fact and having reread it does say summer 2014. Its interesting that you know exactly what price i paid as I haven't stated that ??

<< but by the time we got to the last page the holiday was coming in at £22.98 for 2. >>

You posted the price. How else would I have known?

irishwales wrote:

The fact that Thomas cook previous had offers as low as £251 to Goa led us to believe that this was an genuine offer. We assumed that there may only be 1 or 2 holiday's at this price to entice the customers in and the fact that it was advertised for 12 hours on their site is also an indication that it was a real offer.

£251 per head is already a very low price - I doubt that it would usually be possible to get just the flights for that price. I still can't get me head around the idea that you could possibly think that a price that was not even 5% of their previous bargain prices could be genuine.

SM

well maybe i'm a little naive and a bit too irish, and thought that there were genuine offers out there. Like I also was stupid enough to come here and ask for advice and just got abuse ..

I'm sorry that you think that you have been met with abuse here. I think that all everybody has been trying to do is explain why most people would have realised that this was an obvious mistake on the website and not a genuine offer. None of us can help the fact that the best advice any of us can give you is to accept that they will never honour that price so it is pointless to try and fight for it and, if you are likely to book with them in future, to take up the offer of £100 voucher and use that against a future booking as Kiltman was advised to do and did.

SM

I'm incline to go with what kiltman suggests, I was just looking to see if there was another option because it seems that the big holiday companies seem to be able to squirm their way out of all sorts while us travellers have to put up with all sorts of errors and delays supplied by them. I have one more option to look at with the ASA before i throw the towel in.

I doubt that the ASA will take this up on your behalf either - the problem is not that the advertising was false because the info in the marketing email appears to have been correct. What happened to you is more akin to a shop assistant putting the wrong price tag on something and this then being spotted by the till operator when they rang it up and who has then given you the opportunity to pay the proper price or else put it back on the rail. Except in this instance they have offered you some compensation for the inconvenience as well.

SM

So if i book a mega expensive holiday ( cruise, first class cabin, first class flights, all the extras) go really over the top, then pay my deposit. Then phone up the next day and say as i only earn 15k a year it's an obvious mistake, do i still lose my deposit???? or do i get a sympathetic, but of course we'll refund you, mistakes like this happen all the time sir.
Yeah right

I dont think you been subjected to any abuse on here - you just dont like the answers youve been given!!

I really fail to understand how you could think that £22.98 for a 3week holiday for two in Goa could possibly be correct.?? You couldnt get 3 HOURS in your local pub for £22.98 for two!

I dont know about a little naive?

At the end of the day, its an offer, they dont have to sell it you for that price. Mistakes like that are well covered in the T&C's - which of course you would have read and ticked the box to show you read them when you booked your 'bargain' holiday!

Hi irishwales

Having worked for one of the big 3 UK tour operators some years ago - the rule was that as long as a physical invoice had not been hard printed off the system by the tour operator on their daily "invoice run" which is generally at the same time of day, each - then the tour operator are within their rights to notify the lead name of the issue. Usually, they will either cancel the booking or offer the booking at the price it should be less any special discounts on offer at the time of booking.

Clearly, this was spotted very quickly and you were notified and quite correctly so as has been pointed out for various reasons above.

However, it's likely that the reservation system is only updated once per day too and could explain why when you searched it was bringing up the same price. It could also be that because you were going through a link or page you had previously used your pc was "caching" and therefore you were seeing the same pricing system. Generally, if searching again for a holiday you have already expressed an interest in it's better to change to a different browser to stop this.

I can appreciate you are disappointed as you believed you had found a bargain - but no tour operator will send 2 people abroad with accommodation for 3 weeks for a price that is less than the cost of the flight....

The tour operator has done nothing wrong in this instance.

The fact that some people suggested that I obviously realised that the offer was not for real are calling me a lair indirectly thats the abuse Im referring to, the same as Thomas cook have which is what upsets me. I naively thought that there were holidays like this out there to be found, But like the tooth fairy it all turned out to be fairy dust.
I have spoken to the ASA who have suggest I put it all in writing for them to look at as it was advised for such a long time after, It was checked on other computers as well as ours.
The payment was accepted and a holiday schedule sent out to us via email on sunday along with the ATOL certificate 2 days after the call, indicating that the holiday was all going ahead.

It's always worth a go. Please keep us updated. Have you been to goa before?

just noticed they want another £3000! For Goa? Way too much! Which hotel was that for?