A DAD has blasted a holiday company after they refused to refund him for a cancelled trip – as he had changed his email address.
Tim Mortimer, from Kensington, South-West London, had his holiday to Florence, Italy with his 13-year-old daughter cancelled due to pandemic restrictions.
And he was left fighting to get the cash back for almost three years after the trip was cancelled – as he no longer had access to the email address he had used to book the holiday.
Tim had booked the trip through Lastminute.com using his work email address in early 2020 before global lockdowns put a stop to his holiday plans.
However, he says that Lastminute refused to refund him unless he can provide proof of purchase – which is on his old email account that he deleted when his advertising company closed down.
This is despite Tim's claims that he still has the same passport and bank details, as well as the booking confirmation number and ticket number.
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The only thing he could not produce was proof that he owned the email address attached to the order.
He told The Sun Online: "They are not interested in any contact with me.
"These people have just kept the money and are making it difficult to reclaim.
"It's thievery."
Lastminute say that they have since contacted Tim and they a processing a refund.
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Tim added: "I haven't asked for anything other than my rights.
"They are putting up barriers to me proving that I am myself."
Tim also believes many other people will have gone through the same ordeal.
He said: "All those suffering families…it's not on.
"I care about my money but I care a lot more about so many people being hard done by.
"I want to call on other people to realise their people power…these people [Lastminute] need to be punished."
Since the cancellation, he says he has received a number of emails telling him he is entitled to a refund, with a link to complete the process.
However, despite trying "more than 20 times" he apparently received nothing but error messages, saying the refund could not be completed.
Once he was transferred to customer service by phone, he says he was told to that he had passed security and just needed to send them an email with all the details and it would be sorted out.
However, they reportedly replied to his email saying that they could not deal with him as he was not using the same email address, even though this had been explained over the phone.
He said: "This is fraud.
"Why not simply refund the card used to purchase the holiday?"
A spokesperson for Lastminute said: "We are sorry to hear that the customer is unhappy. Our teams have followed the available processes to speed up the refund as much as possible but, unfortunately, there are some timings in bank transfers that are out of our control.
"In this case the customer contacted our teams from a different email address than the one used for the booking, which unfortunately delayed the process.
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"In order to be compliant with the applicable general data protection regulations we must follow specific procedures when a customer wants to make changes in a booking, such as using the same email address to request any change.
"However, our teams have been able to process the refund and the funds will be with the customer in the coming days."
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