Travel agent has sold my airline tickets

[v15ben]

In my defence I have my head in an Amadeus code book as we switch systems on Monday. I'll be sitting here long into the night!

[emicen]

Streetrod, emailed you a phone number for my father (ex-ABTA Scotland chairman) if you need advice or help trying to find alternative seats.

[Streetrod]

emicen said:

Streetrod, emailed you a phone number for my father (ex-ABTA Scotland chairman) if you need advice or help trying to find alternative seats.

Wow!!! thanks a lot. I will keep you up to date

[Dave81]

Streetrod said:

Hi guys I need some help, I booked fights for family to fly to Canada over the Xmas period and paid a deposit back in August of £400. The agent stated that the balance would not be due until now, i.e. the end of October. Anyway yesterday I got a call form another agent in the company saying that because I had not paid the balance Air Canada had sold my seats on. As you can imagine I went ballistic. They have not contacted me at any time to say that this was going to happen or give me the opportunity to pay the balance early as I was expecting to pay it now.

They have offered me my deposit back but I need those flights as there are now no other flights available unless I am willing to pay £1000 more and go indirectly.

Guys what can I do and what is my legal position on this?

I understand this isnt the case here but,
My question would be that if i pay a deposit on near anything......then knowingly do not bother to pay the outstanding balance by a pre determined date the first thing they usually do is take your deposit and say tuff st!!!! Due to your failiure to pay i'm sure they would have all the legal backing to not give your deposit back (goodwill gesture or not).

So if they claim you were at fault, by the nature of a deposit, why would they offer a full refund of the deposit???

Seems some kind of responsibility for error on their side if you ask me and one that i would ask TS/ABTA about??

Hope you sort it and get to Vancover for Xmas.

[Streetrod]

Hi Guys, first I would like to say thanks for all the good advice.

Thankfully I have managed to get things sorted out after the agents finally admitted liability.

Here is the full story. I paid my deposit on the 6th Aug and was told the balance would be due at the end of Oct. They then called Weds last week to say that the tickets had been sold on as I had not paid the balance. I did not accept this so I called Air Canada. They told me that the agents had cancelled my booking on the 7th Aug, the day after I booked it. The agent disputed this so I had to get them on a 3 way conference call with Air Canada and myself, and still they denied any wrong doing.

Next they tried to palm me off by saying "I would not understand how the Airline booking service worked as it was very complicated" This was a red rag to a bull so when I pointed out my qualifications and he reeled his neck in a bit.

At this point I had had enough and told them that I had been in contact with Trading Standards who on seeing the evidence had concluded that they were in breach of contract. When I asked for the names of their directors they would only give me their "Phone Names" and not their real ones.

So I pointed out what happened to the last person who had taking the piss out of me and how he was stuck with paying the Miss Streetrod £70k in compensation and £50k in costs only last year. This seemed to strike a chord as we suddenly went from a position where they were taking no responsibility and could only offer us indirect flights at an inflated cost, to all of a sudden direct flights being available at the same cost but we would have to leave a day early and come back a day later. Not perfect but we could deal with it.

This is very much the shortened version of three days of constant phone calls. In conclusion don’t take anything these guys say for granted. Some but not all are just a bunch of crocks.

[Puggit]

Streetrod said:

This was a red rag to a bull so when I pointed out my qualifications and he reeled his neck in a bit.

You used to work in an abbattoir?

[emicen]

Glad to hear you got it sorted out. There are indeed some serious nuggets in the industry out there, the hope the ones who dont really add value would be wiped out by the dotcom evolution hasnt quite come to fruition yet!

Streetrod said:

So I pointed out what happened to the last person who had taking the piss out of me and how he was stuck with paying the Miss Streetrod £70k in compensation and £50k in costs only last year.

Thats some big numbers! Car, house or employment dispute!?

[Streetrod]

emicen said:

Glad to hear you got it sorted out. There are indeed some serious nuggets in the industry out there, the hope the ones who dont really add value would be wiped out by the dotcom evolution hasnt quite come to fruition yet!

Streetrod said:

So I pointed out what happened to the last person who had taking the piss out of me and how he was stuck with paying the Miss Streetrod £70k in compensation and £50k in costs only last year.

Thats some big numbers! Car, house or employment dispute!?

Employment, In brief my other half was sacked for only hitting 93% of target where as her two fellow male directors only hit 28% and 36% of target but still kept their jobs. As you can imagine we were not well pleased. But that is another story

[Rouleur]

Glad it all worked out for you. It's a shame you'll never know why they cancelled the seats after 24 hours (a balls up I imagine).

[Puggit]

Rouleur said:

Glad it all worked out for you. It's a shame you'll never know why they cancelled the seats after 24 hours (a balls up I imagine).

On some airlines (ie Singapore) the booking needs to be ticketed within 24 hours or the airline cancels automatically.

[jamoor]

Puggit said:

Rouleur said:

Glad it all worked out for you. It's a shame you'll never know why they cancelled the seats after 24 hours (a balls up I imagine).

On some airlines (ie Singapore) the booking needs to be ticketed within 24 hours or the airline cancels automatically.

Most airlines do this if a ticket isn't issued, they may have forgotten to issue it.

[Rouleur]

Puggit said:

Rouleur said:

Glad it all worked out for you. It's a shame you'll never know why they cancelled the seats after 24 hours (a balls up I imagine).

On some airlines (ie Singapore) the booking needs to be ticketed within 24 hours or the airline cancels automatically.

Air Canada certainly didn't do that in the past, and even if they do now it is of course up to the agent to get tickets issued. Anyway in this instance the agent cancelled the seats according to AC.

[v15ben]

Glad you got a solution to this in the end!
Some airlines have instant issue so you'd probably have to pay in full for the tickets the same day or overnight. However the Air Canada flights would have had a longer deadline i.e. the end of October presumably and the agent would know that at the time they booked them.
At a guess they probably deleted the seats by accident and either forgot or couldn't be bothered to hold them again. Either that or there weren't enough seats remaining at the same price so they tried to blag it. Rubbish!