Criticism
In 2009, lastminute.com attracted much criticism on consumer sites and blogs regarding their association with highstreetmax.com, a brand owned by
Adaptive Affinity, in turn owned by US corporation
Vertrue. The company was accused of subjecting customers to negative option selling, whereby if they click or do not untick a certain box they find later that they were subject to unauthorised credit card withdrawals for membership schemes they had not signed up for, whose details they were not advised and whose supposed benefits they did not see. This attracted the attention of BBC Radio 4's consumer affairs programme
You and Yours on 30 January 2008 and the consumer pages of the
Daily Mirror in July 2008.
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The firm responded by discontinuing the relationship with highstreetmax.com and saying, 'Once our customers leave our site they are given an option to sign-up for a third-party cash back programme. When they sign up within the terms and conditions it is made clear that further payments will be taken. However we have had some feedback from customers who have inadvertently signed up. On this basis we feel that it is the right thing to do to take this off our site.'
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On 18 May 2020, Lastminute.com was
listed 49th worst of 53 Travel Companies in giving refunds for cancelled flights and refunds by Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis. They were given a
Net Promoter Score (NPS) of -87 calculated by subtracting the percentage of respondents who rated their experience with the firm as 'Poor' from the percentage who rated their experience as 'Great'. The number who rated their experience as 'OK' is not factored in. Only 4 others out of 53 were given poorer scores.
In 2020, Lastminute.com attracted criticism from consumer group
Which? after the company failed to meet its promise to refund customers for Covid-impacted holidays.
[42] The online travel agent was investigated by the Competitions and Market Authority (CMA) in December 2020, as a result of this failure.
[43] A survey conducted by Which? in the same month ranked Lastminute.com as "
the worst booking site in the UK", with the year "being an even worse bet, because of the way it has treated customers during the coronavirus pandemic".
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