In January last year, my wife and I paid £4,330 to take part in a two-week volunteer conservation programme in Costa Rica with travel firm GVI. Flights were not included, so we booked these separately, and bought the books and equipment we needed. In July, we both received an email that nonchalantly informed us that the programme we were booked on would be closed during our trip, and that our booking should not have been taken.
We were devastated. We spent about a month of back and forth via emails and calls. We were pressured simply to change our dates, or to accept a credit note.
We repeatedly explained that neither of these options were possible and that we wanted our money back. Only after lodging a complaint did we receive confirmation we would be refunded, minus a £10-per-booking processing fee. We were told payment would take up to 180 days.
More than six months have passed and we’ve received nothing. The process has been incredibly stressful, and we felt bullied by a staff member who tried different excuses for us to not be eligible.
JDB, Tiverton, Devon
GVI boasts that its global conservation programmes offer volunteers the chance to “change the world for the good”. But no one who scrutinises its terms and conditions would readily part with the hefty cost, for these are breathtaking in their audacity.
Essentially, GVI awards itself the right to cancel a booking at any time, for any reason, and offer customers a credit note instead.
It also allows itself to change the original destination and the conservation project when a customer redeems the credit note. In short, you could end up anywhere, doing anything, at any date that suits GVI.
This extraordinary liberty makes no allowances for the fact that customers will probably have paid for flights and visas – which aren’t included in the booking – and may not get the fares back.
Those who insist on a refund must then forfeit their £75 application processing fee, and pay a further £10 processing fee. You’ve read that correctly: if GVI cancels a trip, you have to pay it to process a refund.
And then you have to wait up to (or in your case, more than) 180 days for payment.
Significant terms and conditions must be flagged up when a contract is formed, otherwise they are unenforceable under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, but GVI merely sent you a link to its pages of small print after you’d signed up.
GVI stumped up (minus the £10 per booking processing fee) with alacrity when I intervened. “GVI should have done better, and normally does, and deeply regrets the frustration and inconvenience,” it says.
However, it did not answer my questions about when, and how, customers were made aware of the terms and conditions, why a processing fee was deducted and how it justified cancellation terms that were weighted in its own favour.
According to the consumer expert Gary Rycroft of Joseph A Jones solicitors, the latitude GVI gives itself to make fundamental changes to bookings is an unfair contract term. He tells me: “If GVI changes the location and/or time frame of the booking, it should provide a refund on the basis it has been unable to perform the original contract.
“Consumers should not have to accept credit vouchers, or pay excessive processing fees, when it is GVI which has not performed its side of the bargain.”
Under Package Travel Regulations (PTRs), customers whose bookings are cancelled should be refunded within 14 days.
A “package” is defined as a booking that includes two or more components, such as accommodation and tourist services. Your booking included accommodation, training and the conservation programme.
However, GVI’s website claims that the “vast majority” of its trips do not fall under the PTRs. The company tells me that is because wildlife conservation is not a “tourist activity”.
As it happens, government guidance on packages cites the example of a volunteering trip to Costa Rica organised by a specialist travel firm, and declares that this would fall under the PTRs.
“Holiday businesses cannot use a fake news ‘this is not a package holiday’ statement in their T&C’s to get them off the hook,” says Rycroft. “And, if it is a package holiday, there is established case law for disappointed holidaymakers claiming successfully for additional expenses incurred when a package holiday does not go ahead. In this case, this would include the cost of flights and insurance connected to the failed holiday.”
Other travellers in this situation could make a money claim through the courts.
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