No ATOL Protection & Price Increases After Booking

Lowcostholidays.com - www.lowcostholidays.com
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Guest's review of Lowcostholidays.com - www.lowcostholidays.com

“No ATOL Protection and Price Increases After Booking”

★☆☆☆☆

written by on 20/11/2014

I recently booked two holidays with lowcostholidays- one online and one by phone. I paid the required deposit for each, and received
two confirmation numbers and two statements of final cost. I subsequently received two emails from lowcostholidays telling me that "the flights on the booking you made with us have failed to complete the booking process" and asking me to call the flight centre. When I did, I was told that for each booking I must pay an additional £1000 because the flight prices had increased since I booked. I politely said that I thought was a little unfair as I had received a confirmed price based on my (large) deposit. Because I would not pay the extra £2000, my two bookings were cancelled.

Only at this point did I carry out any research into lowcostholidays, and found that they are actually based in Spain, do not offer ATOL protection, and are under legal investigation by the CAA. I have emailed customer services several times, but have received no response.

Prospective customers may wish to tread cautiously - I am proceeding with legal action, but it is rather tedious and expensive taking action against a foreign company.

Lowcostholidays.com's Comment

Written on: 20/11/2014

Dear Customer,

I completely understand your frustration and I'm sincerely sorry that this has happened to you.

The initial confirmation you received would have only been to confirm the payment; not the booking. Until you've received your travel documents, the holiday itself has not yet been confirmed. Sometimes, when more than one customer is looking at the same booking, flights can get double booked. We get our prices straight from the airlines so, unfortunately, when this happens, we can't offer any other price than the one they're telling us to. We were happy to offer you the upgrade, so that you would still be able to go on your break, but could not cover the extra cost. I completely understand why this would be frustrating for you but, sadly, issues like this are unavoidable.

As your correctly stated, we do not offer ATOL protection. ATOL is a scheme that is run by the CAA for UK based companies only. As we are a Spanish based company, our customers are not eligible for ATOL protection. However, we do comply with Spanish and EU Regulations. The protection we have means that we have insurance in place to protect up to 2 million euros in customer monies. It also means that in the unlikely situation that lowcostholidays becomes insolvent, the Ministry of Tourism & Sport of the Balearic Islands will use the Bond to refund our customers.

I can also fully assure you that any accusations that we are under investigation by the CAA are entirely untrue. The CAA would not investigate a company that is not a member of their organisation.

I hope this brings clarity to any concerns that you had. Please don't hesitate to let me know if there's anything more I can do for you.

Kind regards, Wade

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Munafpatel's Comment

Written on: 22/11/2014

Hi.but how do we complain and claim about something we have not received within our package

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Lowcostholidays.com's Comment

Written on: 24/11/2014

Dear Customer,

Unfortunately, ReviewCentre doesn't allow links, email addresses or any other contact details to be posted on their website. However, if you'd like to privately message me via Facebook, I'll ensure your query reaches the appropriate department.

Kind regards, Wade

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