blimey nothing from anyone !!!

Replies to topics here in this section are usually quite quick, but with the festive season upon us and our members enjoying this, replies may be a little slower this time of year.

Mark

Your problem is with accepting the word of the agent.
Thomson had informed you it was cancelled. All the reports were that flights were being cancelled. Your friend confirmed this when he spoke with Thomson. Personally I think the agent was guilty of ignoring everything except what the system said.

fwh

Personally I think the agent was guilty of ignoring everything except what the system said

Surely that could also be said about the person trying to book another holiday knowing how bad the weather is.
Commonsense should have been used on both parts.

I think we can all understand the OP desire to want to salvage his holiday plans and to try and quickly find an alternative to the cancelled holiday.

I might have been suspicious to have been offered a flight to FUE from BHX at exactly the same time and with the same airline as the original cancelled flight. Would a clue not have been the OP's original flight number and the flight details given by the travel agent when booking the second holiday?

The Thomson systems were obviously not updated quickly enough to stop a sale on a flight that had been cancelled. Wrong but perhaps forgivable given the chaos experienced at airports, airlines and travel companies with the weather.

The travel agent should have perhaped questioned Thomson more given the situation with the OP's original flight being cancelled and being at exactly the same time, same route, sme airline, as originally booked.

I think very unfortunate but just one of those things to chalk up to experience.

Let's hope the OP has a Happy Christmas whereever he is.

FWH..... i do not see anything wrong with accepting the word of the agent, in any case we asked on numerous occasions that he was sure the flight was available

ap1408
we had friends that flew slightly later in the day from bhx to the same destination with monarch airlines, our flight was the only thomson flight to be cancelled that day the agent ...and other agents all had the flight as still available to sell on their systems i am sure that we have all been misinformed by travel comapnies before but the fault surely lies with thomson not removing it from their system ....we are talking about this flight still showing for sale 24hrs after they told us it was cancelled i am wondering if the 2nd holiday could fall under " taking money by deception" ... i doubt i would be able to get away with that but its not a bad idea eh ....leave a holiday up for sale after its cancelled and bank the money then pay people back after 14 days nice little earner i think

I would think that the obvious thing to do in the first instance is to contact your credit card company - whether Thomson actually has the money yet will depend on which agency you used to purchase the 2nd holiday from. If it wasn't an agency owned by Thomson (and perhaps even if it was) the TA should have been able to charge this back to your card the moment they realised that the there was an error in the system and the holiday didn't exist to sell. Either way your card company can still do this for you.

As for 'taking money by deception' I doubt that argument will get you very far - Thomson could well argue that even if the agent was taking the computer system on trust, that you should have realised that it was unlikely that the identical holiday could still be on offer since they had unequivocally already told you that it had been cancelled. This happened when Thomson's first priority was probably dealing with passengers already in transit and updating their website with information for those affected by the weather etc. And either way these things do take time to do.

I can appreciate that you were desperate to try and get a replacement holiday sorted but personally in those circumstances I would have assumed that the agent was talking through his hat and at the very least he is as equally to blame as Thomsons - after all he refused to doublecheck with Thomson until after he'd taken your money. In your situation I would be chasing the agent for a refund rather than letting him pass the buck to Thomson, he's the one that took your money for a holiday that commonsense - and you - were telling him was unlikely to exist.

SM

Did you ask why your original holiday was cancelled when the flight is still for sale?
So what happens now? Do you get all of your money back? I think if money is took by deception then they will give it you back so either way you'll have your money back. Or do you want the travel agent (or Thomson) to stand trial for the crime?
Are you hoping for More than just your money back? It sounds like if you had the money available you could have got away using someone else instead of Thomson so in reality Thomsons actions stopped you going away as they took your only available money! Whether any of this will get you compensation I have no idea!

I can appreciate you were keen to get away but it makes no sense to me why you would book the same destination and flight when you had already been informed that particular flight had been cancelled due to bad weather.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to have chosen a completely different destination and departure airport?

Ultimately, it's the airline who makes the decision on the cancellation of a particular flight and it makes common sense under these circumstances that Thomson and the airline were one and the same.

If anything, you jumped the gun in trying to book another holiday and probably all you can do at this stage is wait it out to see if you can get your money back.

The agent is also at fault for trying to book a holiday when you as a passenger were trying to book again on the same flight when you were already notified it was cancelled. Sounds a bit like greed or total stupidity on behalf of the agent and they should have checked directly with the airline or tour operator before confirming a new reservation and taking your much needed funds.

Sadly, tour operators and agents are not generally noted for speed when processing refunds either

Good luck with it all and please keep us posted to the outcome.

as i have said we tried many many times to tell the agent that the flight was cancelled, but as we all know airlines do make mistakes, so were we to completely ignore what more than one agent told us surely they are the first people thomson would advise of a cancellation, if not then they are grossly negelgent because i am sure that others would be booking the flight that was cancelled, we were meeting friend there who incidentally left on a later flight from birmingham so we couldnt really try another destination. not sure what you mean by wait and see if we get our money back they cancelled the flight so i assume we will get our money back not may.
we did ask them a nuber of times to check and we were assured that all was ok.
we used all our money booking the second holiday so didnt have any left to try for a diferent holiday after the 2nd fiasco so i think maybe they do owe us some sort of recompense.
thanks for the replies
Bill