Lastminute.com to Pay Out £7m in Refunds for Cancellations

The hotel and flight booking website, lastminute.com, has agreed to pay over 9000 customers a total of £7m in refunds for holidays that were cancelled due to the pandemic.

Following a Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation, the website has promised to provide refunds by 31 January at the very latest.

Disgruntled customers say that they have had to spend months badgering lastminute.com to provide them with refunds for hotel and flight bookings that were cancelled during the UK lockdown earlier this year.

One student from the University of Nottingham paid £700 for a trip to Barcelona, but said: “I still have not received a refund almost six months later. I have also tried numerous times contacting lastminute by telephone and email, however they have been unresponsive. This money is a great deal to me, and I feel I have exhausted every possible avenue trying to get it back.”

The CMA said that many of the online travel agent’s customers “will have had to wait more than 14 days, exceeding the repayment window required by law. Following CMA intervention, lastminute.com has now signed formal commitments – known as ‘undertakings’ – to pay these refunds as soon as possible and by 31 January at the latest.”

The CMA wrote to over 100 holiday firms in July highlighting their duty to refund customers for cancelled bookings. As per consumer law, package holiday companies must provide refunds “without undue delay and in any event not later than 14 days from termination”.

CMA chief executive, Andrea Coscelli, said: “Online travel agents have a legal responsibility to provide prompt refunds to customers whose holidays have been cancelled due to coronavirus – irrespective of whether the agent received refunds from airlines and accommodation providers.

“The CMA is continuing to investigate package holiday firms following concerns that people are not getting the refunds they are entitled to when bookings cannot go ahead because of the pandemic. If we find that businesses are breaching consumer protection law, we will not hesitate to take further action.”

A statement from lastminute.com said: “Since March we made refunding customers our number one priority. We engaged constructively with the CMA and while we have already refunded more than €200m worth of bookings overall, it is the group’s commitment to work through those that remain to be paid.”