Lastminute.com will face legal action unless it repays over £1 million to customers after their package holidays were cancelled, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
The travel company had formally agreed to pay out over £7 million to more than 9,000 customers when their holidays were cancelled due to the pandemic, the CMA announced in December. All those affected were due to get their money back by 31 January 2021 at the latest, however, Lastminute.com still owes over £1 million to 2,600 customers.
The company has also failed to meet its ongoing commitment to repay all customers entitled to a refund within 14 days of their package holiday being cancelled on or after December 3 2020. It also told some package holiday customers to go directly to their airline to get the cost of their flight back, which is in breach of its commitments and against its obligations under the Package Travel Regulations.
The CMA has informed Lastminute.com that it will take court action if it does not repay the outstanding refunds within seven days.
Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, said:
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. 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.