Travel website TravelUp boasts “We’re Winners” after being nominated for a consumer award. Yet hundreds of its customers are now claiming they’re losers because TravelUp changed its terms and conditions after they’d paid for airline tickets.
The wording back in February stated that if your flight was cancelled one remedy was receiving a full refund.
That clause was amended after the pandemic started to say that TravelUp can deduct bank card charges and “a small administration fee” when processing refunds.
According to angry customers, the fee is £75 per passenger, which isn’t exactly a small amount for a large family group.
Susan Reid from Warrington was due to fly to New York with British Airways when her flight was cancelled due to the pandemic.
She wants her £521 tickets refunded but says she cannot contact TravelUp by phone, email or its own website.
“A Facebook page called TravelUp Covid Response has been set up and there I found out they were charging £75 per person admin fee plus 2% credit card charges if people wanted refunds, which could take up to 18 weeks,” she said.
Russell Nicholson says he has been refused a full refund on his cancelled £558 Qatar Airways flight from Manchester to Sri Lanka.
“All TravelUp are offering me is my airport taxes,” he says.
“Qatar Airways have refunded a colleague of mine who was on the same flight, the only difference is he booked directly with the airline, so why are Travelup saying I’m not entitled to a refund?”
Mark Etchells from Ulverston, Cumbria, said: "The admin fees are unbelievable, they are keeping already refunded airline cash, it's shameless."
Suchit Mehta of Newport, South Wales, agreed to change his flight to Bombay from March to August rather than have a partial refund.
He says that a TravelUp agent told him that he must pay any difference in the fare, which would be £594.
Then he says a different agent said the difference was £756, and later it became £1,039.
“At this point I felt that they thought I was an easy target because I was easily convinced to re-book the tickets and now they want to squeeze me for as much as they can,” he said.
“I got very angry and said that this is not fair and I will seek legal help and the agent sarcastically said that's fine.
"I checked on their website for the same tickets type, same airline and same date, and the price was only £1,578. I originally paid £1,219 for the tickets which means I should be only playing a fare difference of £359.”
TravelUp has not replied to my queries.
It is run by director Ali Shah, 43, who got £276,000 in pay and pension benefits according to the latest accounts, and made a gross profit of £20million, paying a dividend of £650,000 to shareholders.
The Competition and Markets Authority said today that consumers can expect full refunds if:
- a business has cancelled a contract without providing any of the promised goods or services;
- no service is provided by a business, because this is prevented by restrictions that apply during the current lockdown or;
- a consumer cancels or is prevented from receiving the service, due to the restrictions that apply during the current lockdown.
CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli said: “The current situation is throwing up challenges for everyone, including businesses, but that does not mean that consumer rights can fall by the wayside. If we find evidence that businesses are failing to comply with consumer protection law then we will get tough – that means launching enforcement cases and moving to court action where there is a strong reason to do so."
