My husband and I paid £4,693.20 for a cruise to the Azores. Our trip was due to begin on March 24, 2013, but Covid cancelled our plans on March 20.
On July 21 of last year, our travel company, Cruise & Maritime Voyages (part of South Quay Travel & Leisure), went into administration.
We made a claim to ABTA [the UK’s trade association for travel agents and tour operators].
Blame game: Barclays bank refused to refund a couple’s cash after their dream £5,000 Azores cruise was cancelled due to Covid
You were told that you had already paid for the Barclays debit card and must request a reimbursement via dispute, also known as chargeback.
Barclays declined. Before ABTA can consider a refund, it needs to be informed of the reason. Barclays refused to provide a reason letter.
We asked for assistance from the Financial Ombudsman on November 6, last year. However, it stated that they were unable to appoint an agents due to a large backlog of cases resulting from the pandemic.
M. V., Bexley, South-East London.
Tony Hazell replies: According to the ABTA website, you can book your trip with confidence.
Covid cancellations proved that any notion of an ABTA Logo being a shortcut to holiday protection was nonsense.
Diverse sectors of the tourism industry have claimed clients and filed claims.
ATOL is responsible for air-based holidays. [a financial protection scheme operated by the Civil Aviation Authority]ABTA can cover non-flight-based holidays if a business fails.
It is important to read all the small print. The document states that traveller must apply chargeback for payments made by credit or debit card.
So I think it is legitimate to ask, what’s the point of ABTA?
When you tried chargeback via your bank, Barclays, Cruise & Maritime Voyages’s bank bounced back the requests.
You were credited for your first payment of £154. However, the third party bank denied you the three remaining payments because they believed that you would be covered by ABTA.
Your attempts to get more information from Barclays were frustrated because the person responding appeared to be under the impression that Cruise & Maritime Voyages was still in business, even though you told them it had ceased trading.
That advice that you contact the company directly suggests you were receiving ‘cut-and-paste’ responses from staff who had failed to read your letter properly. So you were stuck between ABTA telling you to ask for chargeback and Cruise & Maritime Voyages’s bank arguing you should use ABTA.
Barclays is now intervening to solve the issue. It acknowledges that it has enough information to escalate this dispute. It has returned the remaining £4,539.20, plus £277.24 compensatory interest. You’ve also had £150 redress as apology.
The basic rate of tax has been deducted from the interest. You may be able to reclaim the £69 tax from HMRC, using a form R40, if your total savings interest this tax year is less than £1,000.
An ABTA spokesman says: ‘If an ABTA tour operator fails financially, customers who have booked protected packages are entitled to a refund.’
That may be the case but there are plenty of complaints from Cruise & Maritime Voyages’s customers who have struggled getting refunds via chargebacks or from ABTA. A spokesman for the Financial Ombudsman Service says: ‘We are sorry that we were unable to deal with this complaint more quickly.’
The company claims that it handled nearly 280,000 complaints in the last year, and nearly 250,000 were resolved.
Phantom eight hour TalkTalk cost me£163
From my TalkTalk phone, I dialed 0330 to contact a customer service representative of a delivery company. TalkTalk has charged £163 claiming the call lasted for eight hours.
TalkTalk thought that customer support would take eight hours to reach a customer.
TalkTalk demanded instant payment and has now blocked my wife’s phone even though the call was made from my phone.
A. G. Edgware North London
Tony Hazell replies:8 hours seems excessive. But, of course, there isn’t anybody looking at bills to decide whether they make sense. Ok, so the computer rules.
TalkTalk has now written off the £163 as a goodwill gesture and your wife’s phone is working.
Do the old bonds between husbands still have value?
My husband, who was my partner in the last two years of his life, died February 1, 2012.
Whilst sorting through his papers, I found some old Axa Equity & Law distribution bonds in his name.
Since then, I have been trying to get a response from Aviva, which took over Axa Equity & Law investments.
It said it couldn’t find any records, but that they would investigate. I was told it could not find any records, but would investigate. This has been going on for several months.
V. C., Salisbury, Wiltshire.
Tony Hazell replies: These bonds may have been cashed more than 20 years ago. Aviva admits it ought to have written you and offers its apologies.
A spokesman says: ‘We’re sending some flowers as a goodwill gesture.’
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