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Old May 2, 2020, 8:47 am
  #88  
plunet
 
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: LON
Programs: BAEC
Posts: 3,883
Originally Posted by ihatechoosingusernames
I have a similar issue with Fly Sharp, a subsidiary of Southall Travel.

Trading Standards have confirmed their behaviour is illegal in charging me a fee to get a refund.

ST/FS claim they are not bound by EC 261 as they are not an airline.

All I know is they have thousands of pounds worth of my money and won’t give it back to me. Even though BA already refunded the money to them, and even though I’ve been requesting a refund for over 7 weeks now.

The flights I was supposed to be on were all cancelled by BA. It’s not like I cancelled it through choice, the flights never happened - how could I fly on them?

Debit card company don’t want to know and won’t chargeback for me.

It seems to me a lot of these companies think they can just ignore the law and do whatever they like. So far I haven’t seen anyone take them to task, but I hope it’s coming soon from Trading Standards or the CMA.
Have trading standards really confirmed it's illegal for an admin fee to be levied for a refund? Provided that there was a provision for an admin fee in the OTAs T&C's at the time that you made the purchase then I query that a reasonable admin fee isn't valid...

From FlySharp's (and most OTAs) point of view
  • They are mostly operating on minimum margins to get your business to book an airticket
  • They are not the airline, it's not their fault the ticket was cancelled by the airline, and they have to do stuff to administer the refund
  • This costs them money, both in time for their staff as well as bank charges for another card transaction
  • It involves the processing of PCI (payment card) which has to be handled sensitively and the systems to store such data are not cheap, and correctly linking this back to your customer records.
  • Also processes and procedures might usually prevent homeworkers working with PCI data but under the circumstances these restrictions might have been relaxed.
What is a reasonable fee is another question, something of the order of the low tens of pounds for each PNR transaction seems reasonable for what for the vast majority of refunds should be relatively easy process to administer, on the basis that most will be quick but in the law of averages some will go wrong and take more time.

I'm not defending sharp business practices of which there are plenty of examples around at the moment. But not permitting an OTA a small admin fee to process a refund that wasn't their fault doesn't seem right.
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