ATOL fee charged by UK travel agent

[ceejilly]

This may open up a can of worms but I am at odds with my UK Travel agent (based near Manchester) charging a fee of £150 as a non-refundable fee against a cruise moved to a later date and within the Cruise with Confidence parameters.

 

I believe the customers contribution per person to ATOL is £1.50 which is charged to the customer by the TA, also quoted...... “if your package holiday includes flights you will be provided with an ATOL certificate as soon as you have paid for your holiday”.

 

This was not the case as booking flights were way over the horizon to book and no route had been clarified. So no final figure had been paid apart from the deposit.

 

Any thoughts from our learned legal eagles

 

Craig

 

 

[Riocca]

1 hour ago, ceejilly said:

This may open up a can of worms but I am at odds with my UK Travel agent (based near Manchester) charging a fee of £150 as a non-refundable fee against a cruise moved to a later date and within the Cruise with Confidence parameters.

 

I believe the customers contribution per person to ATOL is £1.50 which is charged to the customer by the TA, also quoted...... “if your package holiday includes flights you will be provided with an ATOL certificate as soon as you have paid for your holiday”.

 

This was not the case as booking flights were way over the horizon to book and no route had been clarified. So no final figure had been paid apart from the deposit.

 

Any thoughts from our learned legal eagles

 

Craig

 

 

Unfortunately U.K. travel agents are trying to squeeze as much money as they can from their customers to keep their businesses going.

We have had exactly the same from the travel agent we’ve used for years (Southern based so different to yours). It seems like they have us over a barrel with existing bookings as if you want to transfer it to a direct cruise line booking they have to agree. 
They charged us £60 to move an Azamara booking and £116 for a Marella booking, both amounts are non refundable but will come off the final balance so we shouldn’t actually lose any money. The only alternative was to cancel the cruises and lose big deposits.

Their agent was quite upfront about it saying that they weren’t receiving any commissions from cancelled cruises and needed the money to keep going.

In the long run they will be the losers as we’ve made 4 subsequent bookings all direct with Azamara at good prices with better payment terms, in fact Azamara found £500 in FCC when our agent assured us that they had applied all available FCC to the booking they hold.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Riocca

[ceejilly]

Thanks Riocca, it does seem they are squeezing very drop of blood from us.  I didn't mention before but with the £150 ATOL fee lost , I was also losing £200 for cancellation fees on the same b2b, that is £50 per person per cruise.  I've lost trust with this longstanding TA and have moved my wallet to another

[Riocca]

3 minutes ago, ceejilly said:

Thanks Riocca, it does seem they are squeezing very drop of blood from us.  I didn't mention before but with the £150 ATOL fee lost , I was also losing £200 for cancellation fees on the same b2b, that is £50 per person per cruise.  I've lost trust with this longstanding TA and have moved my wallet to another

They’ve certainly never mentioned an ATOL fee so it might be worth talking to ATOL about that as it does seem wrong Our TA did try and tell me that they could delay a refund for 90 days as ATOL said it was ok even though it was actually against the Package Travel Regulations.

One plus for Azamara, during the early uncertainty of the pandemic we cancelled a 2020 cruise before Azamara cancelled it, I thought I would lose the deposit but Azamara gave it back as a FCC. We have also been able to keep all of our onboard booking bonuses for cancelled cruises and use them on new bookings.

[uktog]

I thought a move under the cruise with confidence arrangements was a free of charge event

[Riocca]

7 minutes ago, uktog said:

I thought a move under the cruise with confidence arrangements was a free of charge event

From an Azamara standpoint yes, again it’s U.K. travel agents adding costs to aid cash flow. Problem is if the original booking was made with a travel agent they hold all the cards.

[uktog]

Ceejilly might also like to consider speaking to Azamara as what they are describing is not in the spirit of their scheme. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

If the TA is doing something shady, shouldn't Azamara be able to claw back the booking without the TA's consent?  [I don't know anything about UK law on this, just looking at the Equity aspect.]

[welshfamily]

Just looking at a cruise on the 9th of April.

We had stopped booking directly ( about 3 years) before the pandemic but waited 144 days to get a refund of over 15k from our online TA based near Chorley, Lancashire.

Trying to decide who to book with now.

I know not being able to use TA’s names is difficult.

Advice appreciated. 

[uktog]

12 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

If the TA is doing something shady, shouldn't Azamara be able to claw back the booking without the TA's consent?  [I don't know anything about UK law on this, just looking at the Equity aspect.]

I think Azamara have some difficulties in the distinction between legal positions and the spirit of their arrangements with agencies. They are dependent on these large agencies for business so it would have to be a really big issue before they’d terminate a relationship. 
I know in my case when an agency sat on my money alleging Azamara hadn’t paid all that could happen was disappointment was expressed to the senior relationship people at the agency. 
Ceejilly should still tell Azamara so at least they know it’s happening and maybe the agency will make an exception in their case following Azamaras intervention.  It’s really hard to see if this sort of thing is going on in UK because most big box agencies provide only their very minimal invoices with smoke and mirrors vague figures you never see the Azamara invoice.  My new High Street TA has provided cruise lines copies of invoices but others don’t. 
I have one remaining booking with my previous “baddie” and have a new battle, this is not a moved booking, it’s a long standing original one but I’ve an FCC and it appears they want a fee for using the FCC.  I need to dig more on this one….. but I wish new Azamara would set better standards/expectations of UK agencies and take action when they are not met. 

[uktog]

5 minutes ago, welshfamily said:

Just looking at a cruise on the 9th of April.

We had stopped booking directly ( about 3 years) before the pandemic but waited 144 days to get a refund of over 15k from our online TA based near Chorley, Lancashire.

Trying to decide who to book with now.

I know not being able to use TA’s names is difficult.

Advice appreciated. 

Do you have an agency you can visit face to face?  Otherwise book direct.  As Phil says the phone people have been really good recently 

[ceejilly]

Thanks everyone in their separate responses back to me.  Just to reiterate the admin fee of £200 has been deducted and I'll live with that, the ATOL deduction of £150 is a different matter which I am still enquiring about (without much luck so far!!). ATOL has replied to me but it's a drawn out auto response email not offering me any specific help.  I need to dig further and eventually find a senior contact at my TA.  I will not give up.

 

To 'welshfamily', for your interest my TA is also from Chorley, Lancashire🤔🤔

[Riocca]

1 hour ago, uktog said: It’s really hard to see if this sort of thing is going on in UK because most big box agencies provide only their very minimal invoices with smoke and mirrors vague figures you never see the Azamara invoice.  My new High Street TA has provided cruise lines copies of invoices but others don’t. 
I have one remaining booking with my previous “baddie” and have a new battle, this is not a moved booking, it’s a long standing original one but I’ve an FCC and it appears they want a fee for using the FCC.  I need to dig more on this one….. but I wish new Azamara would set better standards/expectations of UK agencies and take action when they are not met. 

The big box TA we’ve been using always provided the cruise lines invoice but with the 2 bookings they still hold I’ve had to press them to get a copy. 
The Azamara invoice via the TA shows them as the customer not me which probably is indicative of the way the U.K. travel market operates.

I would say Azamara invoices could be clearer with pricing information especially where FCC or other offers are applied too often it just shows an adjusted price and an offer code in a different box. Probably ok when you have just booked and remember what it was all about but unless I make notes it becomes difficult to work it out a year or so later.

[ceejilly]

So the saga moves forward........I have submitted a complaint to 'The Travel Network Group' to investigate whether the fee of £150 to ATOL is correct.  I hope others 'cruisers' do not have this experience?

 

Craig

[Riocca]

25 minutes ago, ceejilly said:

So the saga moves forward........I have submitted a complaint to 'The Travel Network Group' to investigate whether the fee of £150 to ATOL is correct.  I hope others 'cruisers' do not have this experience?

 

Craig

Don’t know if this has any significance but we recently had a Mekong river cruise cancelled by APT, this was booked via our usual travel agent. As it was a flight inclusive package we had an ATOL certificate issued by our TA on behalf of APT. We received a full refund of our large deposit from APT via the travel agent, there was no mention of the retention of the ATOL fee, of course the speed our travel agent paid out the refund is another story.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Riocca

[Mackdogmolly]

What the heck is ATOL? A UK thing?

[uktog]

It is Air Travel Organisers Licensing and is a very useful consumer protection should a travel provider fail. 

 

https://www.caa.co.uk/atol-protection/

[ceejilly]

Back to the can of worms.............the situation now is that my TA has said they have been in touch with me through one of their sales reps under the name of ******* and they consider the matter over, they are not being generous with the truth. No one has phoned me and I don't consider the matter over with.  

 

It doesn't help when (like many cruisers), due to Covid, planned cruises were booked and then cancelled or moved over to a later cruise with the same booking reference number.  Luckily the TA has the information of what cruise this debacle relates to, but they are resisting to give me the details.

 

The position now is to keep on being a pain in the butt and continue emailing the TA for the information (what cruise is this being referred to) until I've received the information requested, so I can identify the ATOL payment which is the crux of this matter.

 

Craig