-
Wizz Air cancelled our return flight at half-term at very short notice and told us we would need to sort ourselves out and then submit a claim for the expenses we had incurred. As a result of this, we incurred an additional £3,500 in costs (£3k of this was flights for 4 pax). I believe we are also due £350 compensation each.
I submitted claims on the Wizz Air website as soon as we got home, but have heard absolutely nothing since. Their website says they will definitely respond within 30 days, so once that time period had passed I sent them a Letter before Action giving them 14 days to respond. The 14 days are up on Monday and I’ve heard nothing.
So, it looks like I will be filing a claim through the MCOL (Money Claim Online) service, but I have a few quick questions:
1) There is a new online system (which I guess might be more streamlined) but it asks if I am claiming for just myself or more than one person. I incurred all the expenses, although the expenses relate to me, my wife and two kids, so what is the correct answer here?
2) Should I / can I submit separate claims for (i) the expenses we incurred and (ii) the flight delay compensation? If I submit them together and add on interest it tips me over the £5000 threshold, so the court fee would be £455. Submitting them separately would incur court fees of £205 + £80. (I know the fees are covered if you win, but I’d still rather not fork out more than necessary).
3) Any other advice about submitting a MCOL claim? Any pitfalls to be aware of?
4) I have travel disruption cover on my travel insurance, so should I just save myself the hassle and claim from my insurance instead? Presumably they will want a final letter from Wizz Air refusing to cough up, and there appears to be no way to get any kind of response out of them. Also, it feels wrong to let Wizz Air get away with this.
Any advice appreciated! Many thanks!
@tf81 if you aren’t familiar with the MCOL process (which most people aren’t) and don’t want to incur a lot of cost, you may be better in the first instance to go to arbitration – Wizz uses Aviation ADR.
Your case sounds relatively straightforward, particularly if you have evidence to support the fact they told you to sort yourselves out and claim later, with the only caveat that your replacement tickets sound expensive, so they may say the cost is unreasonable, but hopefully you also have evidence that this was a fair cost. You can ask your insurers as well to see what steps they expect you to take to recover the money from Wizz before they will consider your claim.
As a precaution, also write to Wizz data protection team to request SAR of all records including recordings of calls in case they try to deny anything. Making the request may prompt some action as well.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
@tf81 one thing I should have added is that in respect of the cancellation compensation, do you know the cancellation reason? In your submission, you should pre-empt any ‘exceptional circumstances’ excuse by asking for actual proof of same, rather than them just claiming it.
@JDB many thanks for all this advice! I’m not that familiar with MCOL, although I have used it once in the past, against EasyJet about 15 years ago, which was a success. However, the initial cost on that occasion was £35, whereas now it would be over £200. So, I will certainly look into the arbitration option you suggested. I’m guessing it doesn’t really matter that I’ve sent a Letter Before Action already, and it just means I can go straight to MCOL if arbitrartion fails, without the need to send another letter, right?
Yes, the replacement tickets were incredibly expensive (about £760 each!), but we were on a Greek Island on the last day of half-term and there was simply nothing else available. Even at this price we had to return 2 days later than planned and miss work. Re. evidence to support the fact they told us to sort ourselves out, I don’t have this in writing for the fligths (I was just advised to do this after spending 12 hours trying to get hold of them on the phone), although they did send an email advising customers to sort out their own accommodation and reclaim it.
I don’t know the process for an SAR, so will look into that as well. Would I need to know the dates and times of all calls I made to Wizz Air, or can they look for inbound calls from my number? I imagine there’ll be a 4-8 week wait for this, so probably something I should have done sooner…
No, they did not give a reason for the cancellation, so I was anticipating they might claim “exceptional circumstances”. I had the impression it was down to staff shortages, but that’s just a guess at this stage.
Just had a quick look at Aviation ADR. Since the airline haven’t responded to me, I need to wait another 10 days to meet the 8-week requirement before getting Aviation ADR involved. In the meantime, I’ll look into the SAR and also the reason for the cancellation.
@tf81 if you didn’t create a record of all interactions at the time, try and do that now from your phone records etc. In respect of the cost of the tickets, did you take any screenshots of other options, to show your tickets were reasonable in the circumstances? Again, if you didn’t try to recreate some sort of record from memory now. In essence, you were hoping that you were spending someone else’s money buying these tickets so they and the court are entitled to some justification for the cost, particularly if much more expensive than the original ones.
Re SAR / GDPR – on their website they should have a privacy policy / data protection policy which should give details of who to contact – totally separate from customer service people. Just ask for everything (paper, electronic, telephone etc.) from the date you booked to date.
Yes, in principle it should be part of your personal data but they may just send you notes of that call if the agent put any on the booking as the call won’t probably be tied to you which may suffice. To be safe, ask for a recording or transcript of all calls.
Your case isn’t complicated unlike say people asking for rebooking a year hence where there is a subjective element, but you just want to have as much evidence as possible to make a simple, concise but clear case for an arbitrator or judge to find in your favour.
@tf81 one thing I should have added is that in respect of the cancellation compensation, do you know the cancellation reason? In your submission, you should pre-empt any ‘exceptional circumstances’ excuse by asking for actual proof of same, rather than them just claiming it.
@JDB the only issue with this is, I expect, from my experience thus far with Wizz Air, that they would just ignore me if I asked them for the reason.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
