A travel firm continued to take payments from a terminally ill mum for a Majorcan getaway she would never take, her devastated family said.
Joanne Dodd, 52, booked an all-inclusive holiday with On The Beach (OTB) at the start of this year for herself, her four sisters, her mum, and her seven children on August 5.
The family were looking forward to a break after Joanne's youngest sister Catherine Clinton was diagnosed with kidney cancer last year.
But Catherine's health deteriorated, leaving her with no option but to cancel her place on the trip with OTB, although payments continued to be taken.
The firm said the issue was down to an automated payment system.
Catherine's sister Joanne told the Liverpool Echo: "She would never have committed to going on holiday if she thought she was going to be in the situation she was in.
"She was very well and responding to treatment, none of us expected it when she started to deteriorate."
As Catherine's health became worse, she decided to cancel her place on the booking, along with her daughter and one of her sisters.
Before the next payment was due, Joanne asked OTB to remove all three family members from the booking on June 17.
They were initially asked to pay a fee of £30 per person, but OTB later waived the cost as a gesture of goodwill.
However, despite saying they would honour Joanne's request, OTB continued to take payments from her account in June and July for all 11 family members.
Joanne's sister Val Allen said: "My sister cancelled them from the booking but OTB continued to take payments for them, which left us struggling to make the payments as my sister who was ill was no longer in work.
"In addition to this, we have all been affected financially due to the lockdown, but we had to continue to find the money for my sister and her daughter as we were not confident that OTB would not take further payments from the account."
Joanne added: "It's bad enough they took it in June but in July they took it again."
It was during this time, Catherine became extremely ill and was transferred to a hospice, where she died on July 20 aged 47.
While grieving, the family were also left trying to sort out their forthcoming holiday.
Joanne and her family believed it was likely their booking would be cancelled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Having booked the trip with ATOL protection, they thought they would get a full refund, along with the payments they had been making for the three family members.
On July 27, the Foreign Office advised against all non-essential travel to Spain, including the Balearic and Canary Islands.
But nine days before their holiday, Joanne claims she still hadn't received any contact from OTB.
She claims she made several attempts to contact them, telling the ECHO: "It is frustrating because you can't speak to them over the telephone as you're constantly just on hold.
"We didn't need the additional stress of just trying to get in contact with them."
It was only on July 29 the family heard back from OTB and were given the choice to go on the holiday "as planned" or cancel and not have their Ryanair flights refunded.
However, if the family chose to continue with the holiday, they would no longer have valid insurance due to the FCO warning.
This was a concern for the sisters as their mum, who is 85, had contracted coronavirus in March and was in a hospital for 11 days.
Joanne said: "They are expecting people to travel and risk their health, we are grief-stricken and with an elderly mother."
With no other alternatives, the family decided to cancel their booking, hoping the refund would cover a holiday in the UK.
Val said: "The children and parents have basically been in lockdown since mid-March.
"The children have had little to no contact with family or friends until more recently at my sister's funeral and in addition to this, we have lost our sister.
"In order to maintain the family's and children's mental health and well being, we felt that the family still needed a holiday staycation.
"But we have been unable to explore this, due to us not knowing if the holiday would take place and the late stage at which OTB eventually made contact with us.
"In the meantime, staycation holidays have been getting booked up and the prices have been increasing due to high demand."
On August 18, the family eventually received a refund but they claim this does not account for their total spends.
Joanne said: "It doesn't add up what they have refunded us, it doesn’t even cover the staycations we've been looking at."
What was On The Beach's response?
Why did OTB continue to take payments for three people, when they had been cancelled from the booking?
Before we provide the detail below, we wish to offer our condolences to the Dodd family at this difficult time.
Our teams are dealing with an incredibly high volume of booking enquiries and we are working as quickly as possible in a fast-moving environment to ensure all customer enquiries are responded to and dealt with as quickly as possible.
The booking in question remained live while we awaited confirmation from the hotel that the amendment requested by the customer could be accepted, our automated system continued to take the instalment payment that was due on the date agreed at the time the customer made the original booking.
Why did it take until July 29 for OTB to get in contact with the family regarding their arrangements when they were due to fly on August 5?
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is fast-moving and ever changing. We are continuing to deal with unprecedented volumes of customer enquiries and have to prioritise those customers due to travel imminently.
The travel advice for the customer’s destination did not change until 27th July, we received no prior warning of this from the government. The customer was contacted as soon as was possible with their options.
Why are OTB not refunding flights, despite this being a package holiday?
In most cases, flights to affected destinations continue to operate and we are able to offer booked or alternative accommodation to customers.
Both of these factors mean that, in the majority of cases, holidays are able to go ahead and therefore neither the performance of the package nor the carriage of passengers to the destination is significantly affected (which are the conditions for refunds outlined in Regulation 12(7) of the Package Travel Regulations).
However, we are offering customers a choice, understanding that some will prefer not to travel.
All customers affected are being contacted by our customer care teams, in priority order based on travel times. If customers affected choose to cancel their holidays, we will offer a full refund on the money that we hold (accommodation and transfer fees), and waive any administration fees.
Unfortunately, as most flights continue to operate on a non-refundable basis, On the Beach is currently unable to offer refunds on the flight portion of any holiday booked, on behalf of its airline partners. However, if flights are cancelled prior to departure, we will of course refund customers with the full flight monies once we are in receipt of these from the airline.
Why did OTB suggest the family continue with their travel plans when it turns out the hotel they booked would not be open for their arrival date?
This is a complicated situation with hoteliers abroad still making decisions on when to open. We are in contact with all of our hotel partners and are completing pre-departure checks for each booking to ensure hotels are ready to receive holidaymakers
Due to the speed at which things are changing this may, on the rare occasion, mean that a last minute alteration may have to be made. If a customer’s chosen hotel is unavailable, as per the Package Travel Regulations, we will provide a suitable alternative and we will advise them of this before their departure date.
If the customer had chosen to travel as planned, we would have been in touch with details of an alternative suitable hotel.
Why was no alternative to either push back the holiday package or flights given to the family?
We regret that we are unable to deal with date change requests at the current time. We are dealing with an unprecedented number of enquiries and our teams are working hard to ensure all customers receive satisfactory resolutions to their queries, at times they are unable to offer new package quotations due to time-pressures.
We are unable to set the prices for flights or hotels; the airlines and hoteliers respectively set these. Therefore, any price increase caused by a change in holiday dates is as result of the pricing policies of these suppliers and not On the Beach.
As summer 2021 is currently on limited release, quotations can be up to double the price paid for a 2020 holiday and, as a result, well in excess of the cost to cancel the holiday. As a result of this, only a very small proportion of the customers quoted proceeded with a change of dates.
Can you confirm if the family has been refunded fully or for the holiday package without the flights.
We can confirm the refund was set up on August 3 for the cost of the hotel.
This has yet to be claimed by the customer. As explained, the customer’s package could still be delivered and therefore we cannot claim the refund for the flight portion of the holiday from the airline.
This was communicated to the customer at the time of cancellation.
