Originally Posted by
tinyriots
The hotel gave me a 100% refund.
If you were on a non-refundable booking then that is very kind of them.
I managed to get £114 of the £520 back from budgetair.co.uk, and now I am talking to my insurance company to see if they will cover the rest. I have sent budgetair.co.uk the evidence I sent to the hotel to see if KLM will have any compassion and grant a larger refund
I'm afraid it's not very likely that the documents you sent to Budgetair will ever get anywhere near KLM. Budgetair will have cancelled your booking through the system and passed on the refund that they got given by the system - all fully automated, no humans involved at the KLM end.
I can't see Budgetair going the extra mile and contacting KLM to get you a bigger refund... a High Street or business travel agent might, especially if you're a regular customer and they know you, but I doubt someone like Budgetair would.
I got a refund from KLM some year ago, on a non-refundable ticket, when my father-in-law died on the day I was due to travel. They did this of their own volition - I phoned them to ask for a letter for my insurance company, the agent put me on hold and then came back saying they had decided to refund my ticket. But I doubt they would still do that in this day and age... and in any case this would require you to talk to them direct, and they are no longer willing to deal directly with customers booked through travel agents.