Holidays4u in liquidation

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johny5_uk

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Thank you to the fat cats that haven't been paying the bills and stole my money for my families flights to Turkey in two weeks today.

Travel Republic - Frequently Asked Questions - Answers page

absolutely gutted last night when I got the email to say the flights don't exist anymore. More for my family than anything as they have been looking forward to this for many months.
The original flights cost around £1,300 and as soon as I knew they had gone I called my bank and used the gold account for them to find me new flights as the accommodation was still booked using another company as travelrepublic (total holiday booked through these) are brokers that use many travel resources.
Found some flights but at a cost of £2,300, what could I do!? If I didn't book them there and then there wouldn't be any holiday in two weeks.

Annoyed that because I paid travel republic for the flights and they then paid holidays 4u that my credit card company cannot give me a refund. Instead I have to go via an atol claim against holidays 4u. If anything TR should give me the refund and claim from H4U!

Also disgusting that the other companies upped their flight costs upon knowing that H4U went bust but there you go, lesson learnt.

The only people that will lose out of this are the holiday maker and the Holiday destination.

I won't be using travel republic anymore either and will pay extra using the large package companies or even booking the flights direct and paying the hotel direct too.

Rant over, I just hope the brokers that booked the accommodation don't dissapear in the next 2 weeks, I don't mind once I am there as I will pay the hotel myself once I am checked in.
 
Really feel for you it's not a nice position to be in. Ever since Excel went bang I now only book flights with airlines that are too big to go bust and pay them direct and also book and pay the hotels direct, much less to worry about.

Sorry to hear your bad news but presume you will get your money back at some point in the future, not that thats any help when your holiday is so close and you have to stump up more cash, anyway hope you do enjoy when you get there.
 
How very upsetting for you and your family.

Sadly just the latest in a long line of agencies and resellers to go pop. Common feature is that because they operate on thin margins they overtrade in relation to their available cash. So even a slight wobble has them in real trouble.

Anyway for general info:

Holiday Company Risks

Luxury Holidays Abroad from Holidays Please
 
Another heads up for you take care with Thomas Cook, a lot of talk around in the city and investors at the moment. Heard some not so good reports and they could go the way of others. £70 million profit from a company this big is not a good outlook more details HERE A lot of sense talked on this blog
 
Annoyed that because I paid travel republic for the flights and they then paid holidays 4u that my credit card company cannot give me a refund.

if you paid travel republic by credit card, you are entitled to a refund from the credit card company.

the credit card company is jointly and severally liable (i.e. you can sue either the credit card company or travel republic) with travel republic for the flights sold to you. no flights means you didn't get what you paid for, and your credit card company is obliged to refund you.

section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 says the above.

more here: http://www.oft.gov.uk/about-the-oft/legal-powers/legal/cca/equal-liability


ALWAYS pay for big items with your credit card.
 
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Sorry to hear about this mate, a few of the lads were due to go away with these shysters and they've had to make alternate arrangements.
 
Thanks all for the help and input, I really appreciate it! Hopefully all will go smoothly.....

I downloaded some info and a lengthy ATOL claim form and on page one it says this:

If full or part payment was made direct to holidays 4 UK Ltd using a credit card, the caa will not refund you the portion of your payment made by credit card and you should contact your credit card issuer to make a claim for that portion under section 75 of the consumer credit act 1974. You will need to forward this letter to your card issuer to assist with your claim. Please note we can only provide this form of the letter and we cannot address this letter to specific individuals.

However, my payment was made to travel republic and the invoice from holidays 4u was invoiced to travel republic yet forwarded to me with "client copy" on there.
I don't know why this was when they are just the broker but sure it would be for a loophole.
Even the cc company said because my payment was not to holidays 4u that I couldn't have a refund? It doesn't sound right, like you said I paid travel republic and they haven't delivered the flight so I should be elgiable for a refund and they can wait months and months to claim their money back from the liquidators?

I think will call the cc company again tomorrow.
 
ALWAYS pay for big items with your credit card.

And small ones too.

NCP double billed my card twice at one car-park. First time I paid by debit cars and it took several weeks and a lot of effort to get my money back....
second time I paid by CC and after one unconstructive phone call to NCP, I phoned the CC company and whoosh..the money was refunded... ;)
 
And small ones too.

NCP double billed my card twice at one car-park. First time I paid by debit cars and it took several weeks and a lot of effort to get my money back....
second time I paid by CC and after one unconstructive phone call to NCP, I phoned the CC company and whoosh..the money was refunded... ;)
Had similar problem at Bristol Airport three years ago. Phoned Mastercard , they put me on hold for about three minutes , then immediately credited me with the £50 overcharged. I always book everything by C.C. , no airline in the world is too big to go bust.
 
Even the cc company said because my payment was not to holidays 4u that I couldn't have a refund? It doesn't sound right, like you said I paid travel republic and they haven't delivered the flight so I should be elgiable for a refund and they can wait months and months to claim their money back from the liquidators?

I think will call the cc company again tomorrow.

You should eventually be covered by ATOL once they've sorted out that the flights were paid for on your behalf by TR.

CC company won't be interested in refunding until they know that ATOL isn't covering it.

I would suggest you confirm with the CC company who actually got paid.
 
Have a read the Lloyds list of " Company's too big to fail" there are quite a few actually.

In 1970 most people would have laughed if you said Rolls Royce Aircraft Co. would go bust . They did in 1971 . If countries and multinationals can go bust then no airline can be bulletproof. Lloyds , hmmmm didnt a lot of people get a bit of a headache when faced with the losses underwritten a few years ago?
I certainly cannot claim to understand high finance or world markets. However i do understand that £50 billion wiped off the stock exchange today does not bode well for me changing my username to LOADSOFMONEYANDMERCS.:doh:
 
Lloyds , incidentally have been trying since august 2010 to shift £10/12 billion of shipping loans , with no takers.:mad:
 
I wasn't referring to the performance of Lloyd's merely a list compiled by them that is used Globally to assess business risk and credit worthiness. Some companies are just so big that it does not matter what they do they can never fail, Shell, BP are the top two. Look at the billions BP have spent in the Gulf and clean up operations they didn't go bust. They took a bit of a knock for a while but bounced back.

As regards the £50 billion wiped off the stock market where there's a crisis there's always opportunity.:)
 
Lehamn Brothers was too big too fail...oh hold on.....
 
And small ones too.

NCP double billed my card twice at one car-park. First time I paid by debit cars and it took several weeks and a lot of effort to get my money back....
second time I paid by CC and after one unconstructive phone call to NCP, I phoned the CC company and whoosh..the money was refunded... ;)

there is a £100 minimum amount of spend to qualify for section 75 protection
 
Lehamn Brothers was too big too fail...oh hold on.....

No Lehman Bros were a financial institution not an operations company where different rules apply their downfall was extensive borrowing to fund it's investing most of which was in housing related assets making it very vulnerable to a market downturn.

At its height the assets of Lehman were twice that of BP and it still failed because of the above, the finance sector firms going bang is a lot different to an operating company that produces goods, when a company like Lehman gets into trouble then to a certain extent recovery is out of their control and relies on a market upturn to get them out of the sh*t . If an operating and producing company starts to get into trouble they have control over production and sales and can restructure or take measures to ensure / help recovery.

So it's important not to mix the financial sector with the industrial / transport sector.
 
Unfortunately the majority of people do not realise what they are getting into or who they are dealing with when they book their holidays.

Places like Travel Republic are not Travel Agents - see the footer on their home page.

Do you know what benefits ABTA and ATOL brings to the consumer? Do you know when the compensation rules under various schemes apply? Is your flight seller IATA licenced, and is this important to you?

It sounds harsh, but I have little sympathy. If we spend thousands on a car, we get it checked out, make sure the dealer is OK, etc. When we come to do the same with a holiday though, we'll get the cheapest we can.

OK, that is harsh and maybe stereotyped - but I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's wife (a travel professional) was in the office until midnight last night trying to sort out the arrangements for those who are not her clients but call because, when it comes to the crunch, the cheap-and-cheerful internet brigade don't have the resources or expertise to cope.
 
No Lehman Bros were a financial institution not an operations company where different rules apply their downfall was extensive borrowing to fund it's investing most of which was in housing related assets making it very vulnerable to a market downturn.

At its height the assets of Lehman were twice that of BP and it still failed because of the above, the finance sector firms going bang is a lot different to an operating company that produces goods, when a company like Lehman gets into trouble then to a certain extent recovery is out of their control and relies on a market upturn to get them out of the sh*t . If an operating and producing company starts to get into trouble they have control over production and sales and can restructure or take measures to ensure / help recovery.

So it's important not to mix the financial sector with the industrial / transport sector.

Don't assume that becuase a company produces goods it's main source of income is the sale fo the goods.

Take a look at the figures produced by Porsche for the last decade or so and see how 90% of their income was generated by financial speculation.

Lehman brothers were too big to fail. They were allowed to fail as a shot across the bows of all these people who thought and still think they are too big to fail.
 
Unfortunately the majority of people do not realise what they are getting into or who they are dealing with when they book their holidays.

Places like Travel Republic are not Travel Agents - see the footer on their home page.

Do you know what benefits ABTA and ATOL brings to the consumer? Do you know when the compensation rules under various schemes apply? Is your flight seller IATA licenced, and is this important to you?

It sounds harsh, but I have little sympathy. If we spend thousands on a car, we get it checked out, make sure the dealer is OK, etc. When we come to do the same with a holiday though, we'll get the cheapest we can.

OK, that is harsh and maybe stereotyped - but I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's wife (a travel professional) was in the office until midnight last night trying to sort out the arrangements for those who are not her clients but call because, when it comes to the crunch, the cheap-and-cheerful internet brigade don't have the resources or expertise to cope.

I have booked this way for over 10 years and always make sure to book with my credit card and that all involved including the service providers themselves are ATOL protected.
But yes, I certainly wasn't looking or expecting sympathy from anyone although do appreciate people's help when they do help.

I know what Travel Republic are but upon close inspection I wasn't sure why I wasn't invoiced directly from Holidays 4U, just like Travel Republic's site says I should have been yet it was them that took the money and "forwarded" it on to H4U.
Would have certainly been easier for me to get my original flight costs back if that were the case.
 

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