[Albion] Last minute.com have just cancelled my Athens trip

[Peacehaven Wild Kids]

Bastards. Wife just clicked on booking to see when final settlement due and it’s posted up as “booking cancelled” We booked and paid deposit a week ago.

Now considering our next move.

Worryingly, (I hope we are but) I doubt if we’re alone on this.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Bastards. Wife just clicked on booking to see when final settlement due and it’s posted up as “booking cancelled” We booked and paid deposit a week ago.

Now considering our next move.

Worryingly, (I hope we are but) I doubt if we’re alone on this.

Have you seen your deposit returned yet?

 

[Colonel Mustard]

Bastards. Wife just clicked on booking to see when final settlement due and it’s posted up as “booking cancelled” We booked and paid deposit a week ago.

Now considering our next move.

Worryingly, (I hope we are but) I doubt if we’re alone on this.

We booked yesterday via EasyJet Holidays. We paid about £400 each but this is for an 8 night stay Inc decent city centre hotel. Depends how long your trip is. If it has to be short, obviously the flights aren't cheap given the Brighton bookings. If you can spin it out for a few days you can get flights for less than £50 from Gatwick + you have a break in one of the most fascinating cities in Europe. Note -- we found that we could have booked flights and hotel independently and got it slightly cheaper. But I still think what we paid is decent value for an 8 day holiday. We paid in full.

 

[Peacehaven Wild Kids]

Have you seen your deposit returned yet?

Just checked, no

 

[Bombardier]

Bastards. Wife just clicked on booking to see when final settlement due and it’s posted up as “booking cancelled” We booked and paid deposit a week ago.

Now considering our next move.

Worryingly, (I hope we are but) I doubt if we’re alone on this.

Surprised? Last-minute.com are notorious for this. Good luck with your easyJet holiday as they too also fail to live up to expectation.

 

[WATFORD zero]

Bastards. Wife just clicked on booking to see when final settlement due and it’s posted up as “booking cancelled” We booked and paid deposit a week ago.

Now considering our next move.

Worryingly, (I hope we are but) I doubt if we’re alone on this.

My only dealing with lastminute.com was when I tried to book flights online with them to Palma over 10 years ago and at the payment page, kept getting someone else's credit card details coming up pre-loaded. Knowing the implications of this, I thought I'd be helpful and phone them up. They didn't seem particularly interested that their site was trying to book my flights on someone else's credit card, but went ahead and booked me the flight on my card.

I then got an e-mail confirming flights to Las Palmas in the Canaries I phoned back and told them they had got it wrong, but they insisted that was what I requested. So I had to fork out to book another set of flights. Long story short, I had to get the Information Commissioners Office onto to them in order to release the recording of my call which proved I had asked for Palma, Majorca, Eventually got my refund, but not without a lot of time and hassle.

(Quite reasonably edited by a mod to take out certain comments made about lastminute.com, but does rather spoil the following one-liner )

I believe they were later a case study for a certain Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

 

[Live by the sea]

Bastards. Wife just clicked on booking to see when final settlement due and it’s posted up as “booking cancelled” We booked and paid deposit a week ago.

Now considering our next move.

Worryingly, (I hope we are but) I doubt if we’re alone on this.

The official advice from money saving expert is to always try to book your flights direct with the airline and your accommodation directly with the hotel . Don’t use 3rd party package providers as you are far more likely to encounter issues like this .

Hope you are able to sort something out direct .

 

[Peacehaven Wild Kids]

Mrs booked it (not passing blame, shes booked us issue free travel for 30 years)

As it was within 24 hours of the draw I think sort of booked in haste. I don’t recall us ever booking with Last Minute before.

We’ll probably book again tonight but probably at £250 pp (x3) more than original

 

[Colonel Mustard]

Surprised? Last-minute.com are notorious for this. Good luck with your easyJet holiday as they too also fail to live up to expectation.

Do they? In what way?

 

[spence]

Surprised? Last-minute.com are notorious for this. Good luck with your easyJet holiday as they too also fail to live up to expectation.

Not from my experience

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Not from my experience

Same

 

[ElectricNaz]

Why, in the information age, do people book via brokers.

It's weird and unnecessary.

Book direct always, I genuinely thought everyone knows this. Use skyscanner to find rough prices etc then book direct

Hope you get it sorted. I'm sure there was another fella on here who did similar for Amsterdam and was booted off his booking because of Expedia or someone

 

[Westdene Seagull]

Surprised? Last-minute.com are notorious for this. Good luck with your easyJet holiday as they too also fail to live up to expectation.

Never had a problem with Easyjet. Now BA on the other hand .....

 

[Bombardier]

Do they? In what way?

Read the easyJet complaints page on FB. Loads of unhappy individual.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Maybe best to try and book late direct with an airline? Seem to be so many third party suppliers reneging already on their flimsy commitments. Market might yet readjust downwards to a sensible level as folks realise they can't get tickets, can't get time off work, have urgent unforeseen dental appointments etc etc

 

[ElectricNaz]

Read the easyJet complaints page on FB. Loads of unhappy individual.

Easyjet for their faults, are actually okay. When I flew in June last year, they cancelled my flight (£80 or so) the day before, ended up getting about £700 off them (EU delay compensation, payed for alternative flights £180, national express to a different airport) etc... So I ended up easily £400+ up from it as they not only refunded the original flight, had to pay comp, and paid for the alternate flight

They initially paid less but they did the mileage conversion wrong and tried to pay me one tier down in terms of compensation. I sent one email and they said I was right and paid the full amount a couple of days after

 

[HeaviestTed]

The thing I learnt the hard way is booking through things like loveholiday isn’t a “package holiday” so if anything goes wrong they need to sort it out for you - instead they book flights and accommodation and take a profit for nothing.

We were in Greece and our flights back cancelled and it was down to us to find accommodation and flights back even though I thought we had booked a “package holiday”.

Same with last minute, you don’t get any benefit - may as well book direct and it’ll probably he cheaper.

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Would always advise booking direct for both flight and hotel

Flight: the airline has a statutory duty to see you right. Why insert a middleman?

Hotel: book with somebody like booking.com where you'll still get a decent deal and - more importantly - you'll have have the right to free cancellation of your booking right up to a day or two before you're due to check in

 

[dazzer6666]

Never had a problem with Easyjet. Now BA on the other hand .....

Yep. One of those carriers used to be the gold standard in the UK with great customer service and the other was an unreliable mess with crap customer service - no longer the case. Think much of the Easyjet criticism is based on history, not current practice.

 

[Beach Hut]

Yep. One of those carriers used to be the gold standard in the UK with great customer service and the other was an unreliable mess with crap customer service - no longer the case. Think much of the Easyjet criticism is based on history, not current practice.

Concur, use easyJet a lot and they are pretty good service for price