Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific - Are there laws in NSW that govern bumps from a prepaid holiday rental?

My partner and I had booked a nice penthouse on the central coast for the easter break - as we were almost there we received a phone call saying that the apartment was double booked! As we had family driving down from Brisbane and we came up from Sydney, we weren't impressed with this development.

They said the only alternative accomodation they could come up with was a $170 3 Bedroom apartment in North Gosfrord, which was dramatically less than the $650 a night we had paid for. Unfortunately we could not find alternative accomodation anywhere due to the Easter rush. So my partner and I headed back to Sydney and my parents stayed in some ghetto 2 star highway motel! I was outraged!!

Turns out the agency we used to book the apartment through hadn't "put it through" correctly and the apartment was given to someone else. All this comes out of the blue one hour before getting the keys.

Question: Is there any laws in NSW (like fair practice laws) that stipulate compensation for such instances? Or guaranteed placement of alternative accomodation of the same value? We're getting a full refund as expected, but there was heaps of petrol involved, a car full of groceries including meat
that had to be thrown out - was a disaster.

Not quite the holiday break I was expecting :mad:

What a frustrating situation. I see that you haven't had any responses since you posted. I'm concerned that folks who are knowledgeable with Australian lodging rules don't read "Other Hotel Programs". Thus, I'm going to move this on to the Australia forum, in hopes that some of your country people read that forum and can offer help.

SanDiego1K
Senior Moderator

I can't answer your question directly, but I can point you in the right direction - the NSW Office of Fair Trading (http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/).

Dave

Sorry to hear about your Easter weekend misadventure!
I would agree with Dave's suggestion re the Office of Fair Trading, particularly the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (which seems to cover the "small claims" area).
http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/cttt.html

I agree Office of Fair trading is your best bet. My big beef is generally holiday apartments in Australia are totally unregulated - the quality varies so greatly as does the level of service / amenities. There is little in the way of unbiased reviews available. I feel you get a lot better value in Europe.

I think your only true legal remedy would be to bring a breach of contract action. If you don't get any joy directly with the parties involved and/or with Fair Trading, you may wish to consider bringing a proceeding in the Consumer, Tenancy and Trader Tribunal. It's designed to be 'mum & dad' friendly, meaning you don't need to instruct a lawyer or set out your claim in legal terms.

The CTTT website (http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/cttt.html) is pretty userfriendly and sets out all the procedures and (modest) filing fees.

I'm not a litigator but I have been anecdotally told of people receiving awards from the CTTT of far more than they had hoped.

Having said all that, any lawyer worth his/her salt will tell you that often the worst option is to initiate a legal proceeding.

Hope this helps ...

Cheers!
I guess any form of legal action is out of the question - I have written a email and am eagerly awaiting a response.
I am interested if anyone has found themselves in this situation before, if so, did you get a discount on a future rental or any other kind of compensation?

One thing here though - after re-reading your original post - is that it was the TA that failed to book it correctly.

Now in some circumstances, the TA is YOUR agent, in other cases the TA is the agent of the party you are booking with. Not sure which is applicable in this case though.

IF the TA is YOUR agent, making a booking on your behalf, you would have some course of action against the TA, for failing to execute their duties properly.

IF the TA is the agent of the property owner, then you would have a course of action against the property, as it was THEIR agent which stuffed up.

Interesting case here.....

Dave

Hi Dave,
The apartment was booked through a holiday rental agency - shall advise the outcome when I hear from them.

Well.... placed a call to the agency that made the stuff up. We were told that we had to wait 3 or 4 weeks to get our money back! The attitude of the lady at the agency was vile. Apparantly there were others who had found themselves in this situation and as a result, we were told refunds are going to take longer than usual.

Whatever!

Asked to speak to the manager but allegedly was busy all day - cranky phone woman said he would get to our complaint "sometime later this week". I didn't end up raising the compensation side of things, assumed by this point that persuing compensation was pointless.

Cranky myself now, I contacted a lovely lady at Centurion who put a "dispute" on the charge. Lesson learnt: Be careful who you book through, especially if its online.....

www.check-in.com.au
http://www.check-in.com.au/customer/HotelDetails.asp?iHotelId=4272