I paid a deposit for a 23-person vacation in 2020 however the agency went bust… I STILL have not had my a reimbursement: CRANE ON THE CASE

In June 2020 I booked a big holiday with 23 friends to Tenerife.

It was booked with Alpha Holidays for May 2021 and was set to cost £12,300 in total including flights and hotel rooms. I paid a £5,000 deposit on my debit card. 

As we all know, the pandemic worsened again and the trip was cancelled. 

I first tried to get my deposit back from Alpha Holidays and its parent company Truly Holdings, but then I read that it collapsed in late 2021.  

I was then told to contact an organisation called the Travel Trust Association to get the deposit back, which I have many times, but it still hasn’t paid me despite many promises.

The closest I got was in 2023 when I was told I was due a refund of £4,142.04 within 15 working days, but this never arrived. Do I have any hope of retrieving this money?  S.K, Liverpool

Helen Crane of This is Money replies: At the start of this year, I wrote about a couple who were still waiting for their deposit to be returned after booking an ill-fated trip to Florida for April 2020. 

Like you, they had booked with a holiday firm owned by the parent company, Truly Holdings – in their case, Teletext Holidays, and in yours, Alpha.  

I couldn’t believe that, five years on from the start of the pandemic, people were still waiting for thousands of pounds back from holidays they booked but couldn’t take. 

So as we approach the sixth year since the covid outbreak, I am even more astonished to find there are still cases which haven’t been sorted out. 

You booked your big trip in summer 2020, just as the country was emerging from the first lockdown. 

You had gathered all your friends and were looking forward to a big blowout the next summer to make up for time stuck indoors, but sadly your optimism that the country wouldn’t lock down again was unfounded. 

It was unfortunate that your holiday was booked with a firm that ran into serious trouble when the industry ground to a screeching halt during the pandemic. 

There were thousands of customers like yourself who didn’t receive refunds and deposit payments they were promised by Truly Holdings.

Many complained to the Competition and Markets Authority, and it launched an investigation into this in May 2021. At that time the company owed £7million to its customers. 

Truly Holdings originally committed to refunding all customers owed refunds by August 2021. They were asked to visit a website and full out a form to make a claim, which you did without delay. 

You told me called the company once a week and were promised the refund in full several times over, but it never arrived.

Truly Holdings then went into administration in December 2021, partly due to the huge weight of refunds it owed customers.

All was not lost though, as trade organisation The Travel Trust Association stepped in and took over responsibility for outstanding refunds. 

The TTA is a membership organisation which travel companies can pay to be a part of. 

It then guarantees that it will provide ‘100 per cent financial protection’ to customers if a member organisation goes under, as it did in this case. 

You were then told to contact the TTA to get your money back, and that is what you have been doing since the end of 2021.

One other option in this situation is to open a chargeback with your bank, if you paid by debit or credit card. 

This is when the card provider attempts to claw back money that was taken form your account in certain situations, one of which is if ‘the goods were never delivered or the service was never provided.’

However, this can only be done within 120 days of making the payment and within that time-frame you still believed the holiday was going ahead. 

It can be better to pay on credit card for large purchases, as this offers better protections.  

I feel I can’t be too critical of the TTA, as it is taking the flak for a firm that has long disappeared – and picking up the pieces after the devastation covid wrought on the tourism sector is no easy task.

However, four years to process a simple refund is obviously unacceptable. 

You chased the organisation constantly via phone and email, and were promised your money within two weeks on multiple occasions, but it never arrived. 

You were also told you would receive £4,142.04 and not the £5,000 you paid, which you couldn’t understand. 

I contacted the TTA on your behalf to ask what was taking so long, and true to form it also took a while to return my messages. 

Eventually, I did get a reply – and was shocked when the TTA told me it had been waiting on you, and not the other way around. 

Its spokesman said that when you queried the £4,142.04 amount you were offered, its team ‘would have emailed to get additional information’ such as proof of the deposit paid. 

It said this information was still missing, which was why you had not received your refund. 

You are adamant you responded to all requests speedily, and said you had provided this same information to the TTA many times over the years. 

You told me: ‘It is pretty laughable they say they are waiting on me, when I chased them down for years on this.’

The TTA did get back in touch with you, and while it took another six weeks, you eventually received the £5,000 you were owed. 

After more than five years of chasing it down, I think you deserve a holiday… 

CRANE ON THE CASE