Lastminute.com fiasco

[Ellie May]

Right all, this is a long one, so hang on.

In 2008 I booked a holiday on lastminute.com (never use these people they are absolutely awful). After discovering that the hotel in the ad was not the one I thought it was (the discription was ambiguous) I cancelled the booking via the lastminute.com website a matter of hours later.

The next day the holiday company took the full value of the holiday (over £1K) off my debit card. I was livid but they told me that they never recieved my cancellation instructions from lastminute.com and therefore said that I would have to pay the whole cost of the holiday. To cut a very long story short, I eventually got everything back barring a £200 cancellation fee, which the holiday compnay told me they would help me pusue from lastminute.com.

Anyhow, the minute I started to pursue lastminute.com the holiday company turned on me and it transired that they had lied to me about who had entered the holiday description (the ambiguous hotel bit) and it was indeed them. So this eventually ended in the small claims court where I attempted to get my money by via the package holiday regs under clause 4.1 on the grounds that the hotel description was ambiguous and that the cancellation policy was misleading (lastminute.com later said I could only cancel via the operator and not them). The judge to my amazement dismissed the claim as he said the description of the hotel was not misleading (i.e. didn't say it was something it wasn't) but he did not address the cancellation proceedure fiasco.

I am furious about this and am not going to let it lie. However, to appeal the decision will cost me £100 and of course I may not win. Alternatively should I be going after lastminute.com now rather than the tour operator and finally if I have already made a claim under the package travel regs can I now go after them under the Sales of Goods and services act?

What do you think I should do?

Thanks

[Guest Old_andrew2018]

IMHO you should cut your losses, as you say the appeal could be lost.