Imagine Cruising won’t refund us for booking wrong year

Back in February, my husband and I booked a Virgin cruise for November 2022 through the agent Imagine Cruising, paying £1,988.

But hours later, we realised that we had accidentally booked for November 2023.

We emailed Imagine to cancel the next morning, but it said we could not have a refund and could only move the booking to new dates, which would incur an administration fee of £1,500.

We cannot travel on those dates in 2023 because it is our Grandson’s Bar Mitzvah.

We wondering why there wasn’t a ‘cooling off’ period in place for the booking – isn’t this fairly standard?

We would like either the money back or a credit for the full amount so we can rebook.

We don’t mind paying a fee as this was our mistake, but an extra £1,500 on a £2,000 holiday is excessive – especially as the firm won’t have any trouble re-selling our cabin with almost two years’ notice. Can you help? L.D, via email

Helen Crane of This is Money replies: You told me you had been ‘so excited’ to book the cruise as you and your husband had not been away for more than three years during the pandemic, and it was a special trip to celebrate both your seventieth birthdays.

But that excitement soon turned into horror, as you received the booking confirmation email and realised that you had accidentally paid for a trip in November 2023 – not November 2022 as you intended.

It’s a silly mistake, but one I think most of us can empathise with. It also should have been an easy one to fix – but instead it turned into a cruise catastrophe.

The next morning, you sent an email to Imagine, explaining what had happened and requesting your deposit back so you could rebook – this time for the right dates.

You thought that, when buying products or services online, companies must offer a ‘cooling off’ period, where the customer can request their money back and the company must give it to them without penalty.

While there is a 14-day ‘cooling off’ window for most goods and services ordered online, this isn’t a legal requirement for travel-related products such as holiday bookings.

Some holiday operators do allow customers a grace period during which they can change a booking, often 24 hours – but it is at their discretion.

Luckily for you, Imagine does have such a policy – but no-one you spoke to at the company seemed to know that.

In the first instance, you were told that you could change your holiday to an alternate date, but that it would need to cost the same as the existing trip or more and you would also have to pay ‘transfer and amendment fees’.

You did look at alternative options, but when you asked for more information, it transpired that the fees for rebooking would amount to £1,500.

At one point, you say you were told the deposit couldn’t be refunded as it had already been ‘split up’ between different Imagine departments and suppliers within days of you paying it.

You asked for dates and times of when this happened but these never came.

You finally got in touch me in August, after you had been trying and failing to get you money back or change the date or your trip for six months.

When I contacted the firm, it said there had been a ‘miscommunication from the team here regarding our cancellation policy details, that often depend on the specifics of each individual booking.’

Its spokesperson continued: ‘We do indeed have a 24-hour cooling off period but, in error, it was not applied correctly in this instance. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.’

I am pleased to say that Imagine has now refunded your £1,988. It has also given you a £500 voucher off a future cruise – though you say you don’t want to book with the firm now, which is fair enough following this deposit drama.

I hope you and your husband finally manage to celebrate your birthdays, and that this time the booking process is plain sailing. 

‘Every week, I look at the companies who have fallen short when it comes to customer service, and those who have gone above and beyond.

‘My trainers have been lost in transit for eight months’  

Reader Tina wanted to tell me about her trainer trauma when ordering with the online discount sportswear retailer, MandM Direct. 

She ordered two pairs of sports shoes and some slippers online back in March. The trainers didn’t fit so she wanted to send both back, for a refund totalling £70.

She returned them via the courier service Evri which had delivered the package, dropping the package off at a click and collect point at her local petrol station and receiving a tracking label to prove they were sent. 

The money for her running shoes should have been speedily returned. However, eight months later she has not received her refund – and now the trainers seem to have ended up with a completely different company. 

Tina has contacted MandM and Evri multiple times over many months, and both say they don’t have and never received the trainers. 

She also went back to the petrol station and checked that the package had not got lost there.

She has now been told that her parcel is with a company called Syncreon – an apparently unrelated logistics company. 

However, she has no clue how to get the parcel from there back to MandM for the refund and is frustrated that it seems to have hit a brick wall. 

It’s unclear how the rogue label got on to the package. The wrong label could have been sent to Tina in the package, she could have mis-printed it at home, or the click and collect station could have been to blame.

Since I contacted MandM it has now ensured that the cash has been paid back.  

A spokesperson said: ‘After speaking to our courier partner we have discovered in returning her products to MandM Direct it would appear that a non-MandM Direct returns label was used so the items were not returned to MandM direct but to Syncreon with whom we have no association, so are unable to access these items.

‘We have tried to make our returns process as straightforward as possible by creating a returns portal where customers can access returns labels and manage the returns process via the Hermes returns shop. 

‘We can completely understand this is frustrating for Tina but unfortunately, the parcel was sent to the wrong address. But as a gesture of goodwill, we have refunded the value of the entire order and the return cost.

‘We really hope this frustrating experience won’t stop her from shopping with us again in the future.’