If I wrote- DH and Mytravel are the best companies in the whole wide world. Can I be sued for telling lies about the company?

I thought defamation of character concerned people and liable was for companies.

It is very hard to sue for the minor statements that are printed on this type of discussion forum. Then these holiday companies would have to prove that they carried out their" duty of care" and did not know the hotel had no rooms for their customers that had just landed at their destination airport.

As i stated i know that DH take bookings for hotels when they have not even signed the contract. That they advertise in their brochure 2 bed appts for school holiday dates and they dont have access to them on these dates.

Please read the following link:

http://www.urban75.com/Action/libel.html

Infact it might be a good idea to make the above link a sticky for this forum and for members to read it before posting.

Well thats ok then, we can always use the defence of "fair comment".

And i think its fair comment to expect to get what you pay your hard earned money for.

I dont except a lucky (or unlucky) dip approach when booking a holiday.

Having been in the Civil Services for many years, its fair to say i've got an idea about whats required to prove someone has been up to no good. If I didn't have whats needed, then I wouldn't waste my time on this. The simple facts are that a company has misled customers and told huge fibs about their services and products. That is why we are all on this site, complaining about the company. I know that they read the postings on this site and others regularly. Hope it makes them realise that what they've done to so many people is wrong. And we are not going to go away!

Dizzy and Wendy
Here, Here!!

Well after they messed me around and lied to me over Zante and also kept changing the price of egypt, i booked 6 adults to egypt fpr £5500 and 4 adults to flordia which with park tickets came to £6000. And i did not do it through them.

I would not give them my money out of principal. In fact i paid more to get a better service and reliability.

So they do loose out in the end.

And here are some more reasons why booking Direct is the smarter thing to do...

I think Somebodies pance is on fire!

*Edit copyright material removed. Please do not take information from the website - it's copyrighted. Also please refer to the libel link or this topic may have to be closed. -Glynis*

Ok in my own words:

I noted on Direct Holiday web site they wrote somehthing like " you can be sure to recieve accurate information and that they will take care of you from start to finish."



As i said before...pance on fire!!!!

Is this ok?

Finally!! I knew it would pay off!! Have just received the missing cheque from Airtours so have claimed my £45 instead of the £20 they were offering! It does pay off so keep at it!

Thats good news pinkladywales. I'm glad they've sorted it for you.

Nice one PinkLady!

Sad I know, but I've been reading MyTravel's financial update on their website today and would be grateful if anyone 'in the know' or with any financial knowledge could enlighten me because I obviously can't do my sums!!

On the financial impact of Hurricane Wilma:
The disruption caused by the hurricane has cost approximately £4 million in repatriation flights and cancellations to date (31 October 2005). The company had 3,133 customers from the UK and 729 from Canada in the Yucatan peninsula when Hurricane Wilma approached the area on 21 October 2005. They take approximately 700 UK customers and 3,200 Canadian customers per week to Cancun in the winter season.

So my guestimate is: £400,000 to repatriate 4,000 customers and another £400,000 to refund the 4,000 customers due to travel before the end of October. How does this add up or are they accounting for all the other refunds they've had to process due to their restructuring programme?

It's not a simple case of 4000 people x £1000 per holiday = £400,000 lost revenue for each cycle. Aircraft were chartered in, as well as MYT's own aircraft to move the 4,000 holiday makers to the DomRep. They were then accommodated, etc, etc. There are many factors to take in to account. I'm sure the £4 million is an acurate figure.

Darren

If there is a problem they will issue a profits/loss warning. As all of this is a recent event then the full effects cannot yet be known. Once the sums have been added up then the appropriate action, as required by the laws of the UK, will be taken. This is standard accountancy practice and to be honest taking into account the problems that this company has had in previous years, they will be playing by the book because the market and the appropriate legal and financial institutions already have one eye on them.

It should be noted that in the UK it is illegal for a company to knowingly trade whilst it is insolvent.

The repackaging and restructuring of MyTravel's finances took place in prior accounting periods in order to deal with problems that arose some years ago.

The recent weather and terrorist problems have not just affected MyTravel but all TO's etc. For example, Thomas Cook issued a profits warning back in the spring having already posted a large loss for last year.

But the sums don't add up do they? 4million averages out at 5K per person in repatriation/relocation of those on vacation and refunds to those that were due to travel before the end of October - that's what I don't figure!

The costs to My Travel and any other TO that has been affected by Wilma won't be restricted to just the cost of re-patriating visitors there at the time. They will have incurred other losses too in addition to the basic transport costs. Their schedules will have been thrown out of synch for other destinations as well and they will have had to pay compensation to those whose journeys were delayed as a result. They'll have had to enter into new contracts with other hotels for all those passengers that they can no longer send to their original hotels until things are back to normal. And no doubt those hotels know it and will be looking to extract most profit from this situation. Hotels beds elsewhere in the Caribbean at fully functioning resorts will now be at a premium, especially as we approach their main winter sun season.

No doubt also had a lot of cancelled bookings from people due to go in the future who would prefer to lose their deposits than take the chance on ending up in a resort that was fully operational. Every cancelled booking represents projected lost revenue for them. And also it wouldn't surprise me if bookings for next summer to the Caribbean are at an all time low. A great many people are probably now thinking twice about the advisability of booking a holiday to known hurricane risk areas during the hurricane season. TOs are probably already contracted to hotels for Summer 2006 and I suspect are seriously worried about the impact that events this summer and autumn will have on bookings for next year. I suspect that £4million could prove to be quite a conservative figure for total losses as a result of Wilma. Reproduce those figures around the other big operators ans Wilma and all the other hurricanes this year will have clearly cost the industry a great deal of money with repercussions for future seasons too.

SM

I appreciate that there will be knock-in affects (cancellations in the next weeks/months, etc), but they will be shown in next year's accounts surely. If in the last 10 days of this financial year, which ended on 31st October, they incurred losses of 4m due to Wilma, what will be the cost to them of the 36% reduction in their capacity this past summer?

I'm on the Boards of Directors for 2 small (compared to Airtours!) charitable companies limited by guarantee and our accounts have to be presented in the same way as any other such company. We are, therefore, required by law to disclose our profit and loss accounts/estimates not just for the given financial year but also for any future years that might have an impact on our longterm 'trading' position. For one of them that currently includes recording as 'debts' on our present balance sheet our committed projected (but as yet unspent expenditure for a new project that we haven't even started yet but we know will run at a deficit until it is up and running in the next finacial year and starts to generate it's own income stream. You're not allowed to continue trading indefinitely if it's clear that future projected income will not cover your known losses and and existing debts.

It's hard to imagine what incentive airtours would have for over-estimating/over-declaring their projected losses as a result of Hurrican Wilma as you seem to think they are. Most companies in their position are anxious to allay investors and customers fears and will, therefore, try and resort to creative accounting procedures to minimise projected losses and liabilities so as to try and maintain market confidence. Any company which exaggerates its losses and future liabilities really does have a death wish!

SM