EU law on refund on flights cancelled by the consumer

luckylucky

I booked a flight to Madrid from Lisbon with Easyjet that doesn't totally suit me now. I wanted to cancel it and although I'm still within their 24-hour cancellation period the cancellation fee at something like €72 (36 for each leg) is basically the cost of the flight so not much point in cancelling. The flight isn't until later next week so it would still be sellable by Easyjet

Anyway this is obviously their policy so I'm not having a gripe at them as such but it seems imo to be very unfavourable for the consumer.

I'm sure they must be in compliance with EU laws - but just checking here in case I'm wrong about that and there are in breach of any regulations where I might have recourse to getting at least some sort of partial refund?

I did note that according to their website 'These Carrier's Regulations apply to flights operated by easyJet Airline Company Limited and easyJet Switzerland S.A.'
I don't know what impact if any the Switzerland part would have for what regulations apply to them?

ch750536

As far as I am aware & I am no expert you agreed to the conditions when you made a contract with them. The conditions are legal, certainly I can see nothing wrong with them, so you have to abide by them.

slimjimmc

EU laws are there to compensate you when the airline change their mind or can't provide the service you purchased. Since you are the one who opted out of the contract they owe you nothing and are perfectly entitled to charging you a fee, you agreed to this when accepting their T&Cs when you bought the ticket.

The cancellation fee is €36 per booking, are you really sure than means per leg (check did you pay the booking fee twice)?
http://www.easyjet.com/en/fees.html

And as far as I'm aware, EU regs apply to all airlines operating within the EU, not just those based here.

luckylucky

ch750536 wrote: »

As far as I am aware & I am no expert you agreed to the conditions when you made a contract with them. The conditions are legal, certainly I can see nothing wrong with them, so you have to abide by them.

slimjimmc wrote: »

EU laws are there to compensate you when the airline change their mind or can't provide the service you purchased. Since you are the one who opted out of the contract they owe you nothing and are perfectly entitled to charging you a fee, you agreed to this when accepting their T&Cs when you bought the ticket.

The fee is €36 per booking, are you really sure than means per leg (check did you pay the booking fee twice)?
http://www.easyjet.com/en/fees.html

Thanks for the replies.

tbh I'm not 100% sure whether it is per leg or per booking. I did think the helpdesk guy said it was per leg though even though I read the same fees and charges as you linked to too. Either way he said that the cost of the flight which was almost €76 with debit card fee would mean in effect I would get no refund if I cancelled - that I am 100% sure of.

Yeah I know all this is part of their T&C's - that's why I wanted to make it clear it wasn't a gripe directed directly at EasyJet per se. I imagine most budget and perhaps a lot of non-budget airlines have similar conditions.

Just as the consumer it can be frustrating as I'm sure you can understand when you make a mistake or circumstances mean you don't want the flight you booked. I expected to take a hit on this when I wanted to change it but had hoped I might have got about half the amount back or thereabouts.

Anyway guess these things happen.... just going to take me a bit longer to get to my final destination and for about €50+ more than it needed to.

slimjimmc

Just went through their booking page and selected the Lisbon-Madrid route, and it says

"Fares on this page:
Are one way per passenger"

So it does indeed look like it's €36 per booking.

luckylucky

slimjimmc wrote: »

Just went through their booking page and selected the Lisbon-Madrid route, and it says "Fares on this page:
Are one way per passenger"
So it does indeed look like it's €36 per booking.

Just had a look at this myself. It's not clear to me however what this actually infers in regards to refunding at the customers request. Are you saying you think I should just be deducted €36 then or €72? i.e. if It's 36 euros per booking then i would lose out on 36 euros but if you are implying that each fare is equated to different bookings then it'd make it 72 Euros. I could of course ring them up again to confirm.

luckylucky

Ok. I rung Easyjet up again- spoke to a polite customer service agent named James who had a northern Irish accent.

He confirmed for me that it was €36 per each leg. Making it €72 to cancel. I explained to him that I found their sites' T & C's a bit confusing that it looked at first glance to me at least that it should have been €36 per booking. Anyway now that's cleared up - cancellation fee on this route at least applies to both legs of the journey. So that means I'm still heading to Madrid instead of to Valencia with Ryanair!

maxer68

That's the drawback of low fares. Most airlines also offer flexi fares which you can change without fee or get full refund - but these tickets are multiple times the cost of the low fare prices

luckylucky

maxer68 wrote: »

That's the drawback of low fares. Most airlines also offer flexi fares which you can change without fee or get full refund - but these tickets are multiple times the cost of the low fare prices

Indeed the lesson in my case I think is to make absolutely sure that it's the flight you want. I thought it was but I discovered after I could fly to Valencia from Porto with Ryanair instead for about the same price which brings me much closer to where I'm heading to which is Alicante which I have to get to by train when I land in Spain. I could have got to Alicante quicker and cheaper by train from Valencia instead of Madrid. Doh!

Still not sure how I missed that as I did a lot of searching.

slimjimmc

luckylucky wrote: »

Just had a look at this myself. It's not clear to me however what this actually infers in regards to refunding at the customers request. Are you saying you think I should just be deducted €36 then or €72? i.e. if It's 36 euros per booking then i would lose out on 36 euros but if you are implying that each fare is equated to different bookings then it'd make it 72 Euros. I could of course ring them up again to confirm.

Yeah that's what I meant. They don't do outward-return bookings so what you're doing is making two separate 1-way bookings.

slave1

Could you change dates/route to get some benefit of your initial outlay?

Roadrat

If you have a legitimate reason for cancelling your flights you may be able to recoup your money via your travel insurer.

UglyBolloxFace

luckylucky wrote: »

Ok. I rung Easyjet up again- spoke to a polite customer service agent named James who had a northern Irish accent

How is that relevant?