Our children were unwell over half-term so we had to cancel our hotel booking in France. We booked the hotel through booking.com and it was clear that it was non-refundable. We called the hotel and asked if we might move the booking to another date – not get our money back – but the manager refused. Is there any way to get our cash back? T.R., Kent.
Consumer lawyer Dean Dunham replies: Let’s start by dispelling a myth. Many people believe that when they make a booking with the likes of booking.com they are contracting with that entity and will be able to make a claim against it if something goes wrong.
This is generally not the case, as booking.com and other similar entities are merely a platform to facilitate your booking and therefore put you and a service provider or seller of goods together. Here, booking.com facilitated your booking with the hotel and your contract is therefore between you and that hotel.
A family’s half-term trip to France was ruined when their children became unwell, but the hotel refused to move the booking to another date
Even where a booking is ‘non-refundable’ you do sometimes find that there are limited circumstances where you can cancel or move the date. The starting point with your question is to review the hotel’s terms and conditions – specifically its cancellation policy.
If the policy provides you with the right to ‘change the date’ then you will be entitled to do this and the hotel’s refusal will amount to a breach of contract. However, this is unlikely to be the case, which means you will have no contractual right to cancel or request a change of date.
So, on the face of it, you have no rights here. However, in this situation I always advise consumers to ask the hotel if it will reimburse them if it manages to resell the room booking. If the hotel was based in this country there would be some legal grounds for this, as under English law a trader should not ‘double recover’ and the Competition and Markets Authority has previously commented that it agrees with this principle.
The same principle may not apply in France but it is, of course, worth asking.
Your only other recourse is to turn to your travel insurance, if you took out a policy. However, you may find you will not be covered if you wish to change the date simply because you’ve changed your mind. If, on the other hand, you need to change the date for a medical or other similar reason, you may have a stronger chance of being covered.
I hired a marquee for my daughter’s wedding and on the day it rained. Water seeped through and dripped on guests. I want to get some money back but the company says it was exceptional weather. There was no contract – do I have any rights? E.S., Gloucestershire.
Consumer lawyer Dean Dunham replies: I often hear traders that hire out goods, such as marquees, say hire contract is not covered under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 as they have not ‘sold’ the goods to the consumer. So let me dispel another myth. This is not true – Section 6 of the Consumer Rights Act makes it clear that hire agreements are indeed covered under this law.
As with the sale of goods, the Consumer Rights Act states that goods ‘hired’ to consumers must be of ‘satisfactory quality’ and ‘fit for purpose’. It therefore doesn’t matter that you had no written contract, as these provisions of the Consumer Rights Act automatically form contractual terms between you and the company that hired the marquee to you.
Unless the hire company specifically told you, prior to your agreement to hire the marquee, that it may leak in bad weather, it will not be able to rely on this and will therefore be in breach of contract (that being the contract formed under the Consumer Rights Act) due to the marquee leaking.
This will therefore give rise to a remedy under the law. The usual one that follows when you’ve had some use of the goods or service (as is clearly the case here) is a price reduction. This right is afforded to consumers under Section 24 of the Consumer Rights Act. The amount of the reduction is trickier, as the law does not assist with the calculation. But the greater the inconvenience caused by the leaky marquee, the greater the price reduction.
Finally, if the hire company refuses to listen, you may have an alternative route of redress if you paid via a debit or credit card. If you paid by debit card within the last 120 days, you can make a chargeback claim by contacting your bank and asking for a claim form or link to an online method of filing a claim.
If you paid via credit card, make contact with your card provider and say you want to make a Section 75 claim. In either case, you will need to cite the breach of contract I have mentioned above, and you must say you are seeking money back to take account of your right to a ‘price reduction’. Do not say you are claiming ‘compensation’, as neither of these claims pay out compensation.