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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Anna Tims

Jet2 sold us a package holiday that didn’t exist - now it’s our problem to fix it

Jet2's website
Our correspondent was offered a refund for the cancelled trip but it was up to them to find alternative accommodation. Photograph: Alamy

In February, I booked a £1,868 package holiday in Crete for myself and my 16-year-old foster son through Jet2holidays. The confirmation said it was two bedrooms in a four-star beach hotel for a week in June. It was to be a validating vacation for him when he had finished his GCSEs. For any child, getting through exams is an achievement and foster children face a whole set of additional obstacles. Six weeks before our departure, and just as the GCSEs started, Jet2 told me that our accommodation was, in fact, one bedroom and one living room with a sofabed. We require two private bedrooms for obvious safeguarding reasons, but Jet2 has refused to find us alternatives. Initially, it stated that we would lose the whole cost of the holiday if we cancelled. Now it says it will refund us, or we can find different accommodation and pay the difference. Essentially, it has sold us something that never existed and tells us it’s our problem to fix.
CM, Devon

It gets worse. After you wrote to me, Jet2, which took three months to inform you of the issue, gave you a 24-hour deadline to decide whether to cancel so, in a panic, you found a villa for a similar cost 75 miles from where you wanted to be and swapped your booking. You contacted travel trade body Abta, which offers a mediation scheme, but Jet2 wrongly told it you had cancelled, so Abta closed your complaint.

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