Opodo has apologised to an Edinburgh family after taking more than two years to pay compensation for a flight cancelled due to the Covid pandemic.
Edinburgh dad Luke, who wishes to go by his first name, has been waiting for a refund for his KLM flights from Edinburgh to Cape Town after it was cancelled back in March 2020.
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Originally planning to travel to the South African capital with his family in April 2020, Luke booked the flights via Opodo, an online travel agency, and has been in an ongoing battle with the company to get his £3,885 back.
The fed-up father-of-three says he felt the airline was dishonest from the start.
He told Edinburgh Live: "I do understand that the travel industry has been through an extremely difficult time. The financial losses to airlines and travel agents must have been huge. Initially, we didn't mind receiving vouchers instead of a refund.
"The problem came when the travel industry changed its policies and said that customers were entitled to a refund. If Opodo had never intended to refund their customers, then I would have appreciated their honesty from the beginning."
After initially receiving vouchers from KLM for a total value of £3,196, Luke asked for it to be exchanged for cash, and the airline's new policy initiated by the pandemic allowed that.
Luke said: "The reason we preferred a refund was that we had a new baby, and the deadline to use the vouchers was 31/12/21. The pandemic was rolling on, and we began to think that we no longer wished to travel internationally with our three small children in the middle of a pandemic."
After submitting a formal refund request on November 10, Luke was instructed to wait 120 days only to find out four months later that the agent never contacted the airline.
Luke said: "I spoke to KLM, who said that Opodo had not applied for a refund on my behalf, and I would need to speak to Opodo again.
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"I was told that I need to apply for a refund online, which I had already done in November 2020 and had it confirmed by email."
After numerous calls to Opodo, Luke was told that the refund should be with him at least three times; however, he still didn't get his money back more than a year in. He is now getting ready to take the matter to the small claims court.
He said: "The vouchers have expired, and the airline have not agreed to defer them, so we are left with nothing. Opodo continues to take the stance that the airline is to blame, but in reality, the airline has already refunded the money. Opodo has also acted without integrity. They have said they will refund the money and have given me arbitrary time frames to wait.
"This started in October 2020 and has been continued now for 15 months. Every time a deadline passes, they make no attempt to contact me. Every time I contact them, they ask me to wait another random number of days or weeks. It is frustrating and exhausting to deal with them."
It has been two years since what was meant to be an unforgettable trip turned into an experience hard to forget for Luke and his family, and as the last straw, they took Opodo to the small claims court at the beginning of February. And only then the family has been paid back.
When approached for a comment, Opodo representatives said: "We've invested heavily in our refund operation team and front-line support since the start of the pandemic and have successfully processed over 2 million flight cancellations since early 2020.
"Unfortunately, in this instance, an isolated incident driven by a human error caused a long delay to Luke receiving the payment. We want to extend our sincere apologies for the inconvenience experienced as a result of this rare occurrence. This should never have happened and does not live up to the standards we hold ourselves to."
