Lastminute.com faces court action unless it pays £1m in refunds
Online travel agent missed Jan 31 deadline to pay customers back
Online travel agent Lastminute.com has been threatened with court action unless it pays more than £1m of outstanding refunds, the UK’s competition regulator said on Friday.
The company failed to meet January deadline to pay refunds for package holidays cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said the company needed to pay people back within seven days to avoid court action.
"It is wholly unacceptable that thousands of Lastminute.com customers are still waiting for full refunds for package holidays despite the commitments the company signed with us," said CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli.
"We take breaches of commitments extremely seriously. If Lastminute.com does not comply with the law and pay people their outstanding refunds quickly, we will take the company to court."
Lastminute.com in December made a commitment to the regulator to pay out £7m to more than 9,000 affected customers. The firm still owes more than £1m to 2,600 customers, the CMA said.
The CMA also said that since Lastminute.com made its promise in December, it continued to flout rules by failing to refund new customers who have had their package holiday cancelled within the required 14-day period.
The company, which is owned and operated by Swiss group Bravofly, has also told some package holiday customers to seek a refund from their airline to get the cost of their flights back. The CMA said this was a breach of obligations under the Package Travel Regulations.
Consumer group Which? said Lastminute.com had been "one of the worst culprits when it comes to failing to refund customers for coronavirus cancellations".