All booked up....

[MichelleSmith]

Can't wait!!!

I was recently looking for deals and managed to find a deal for 150pp on April 23 - 30th.

After being on a premium rate number for how long, the man said the price went up to 200 as the man said On the phone monarch said you must have a bag per person which was a load of crap, this was without the transfer so your looking around 225pp, for a week in april, pretty high really.

I later looked on the net and managed to book the same flight, for 2 people with 1 bag! In the end I booked the same flight and got the ozlem apartments for £20, pretty good.

If you're worried on what to do don't be scared to book it all separate, it's easy peasy!

Stroll on April!

[Chocoholic]

Good for you, that is a good deal. Don't it make you feel good when you save money?
I have been booking seperately for a few years now although is not so easy to get cheap deals now Aegean is no more and I need to go from a regional airpots as Manchester costs us a fortune to get there and we end up hardly saving any money.

[john G]

If you're worried on what to do don't be scared to book it all separate, it's easy peasy!

It may be easy peasey booking it but in the last 2 years i've been caught up twice in companies who have went bust - its not easy peasy trying to get your money back and flights rebooked.

Booked separately for next year and tbh I don't think i'd do it again unless things changed within the flight/holiday business.

[MichelleSmith]

If you're worried on what to do don't be scared to book it all separate, it's easy peasy!

It may be easy peasey booking it but in the last 2 years i've been caught up twice in companies who have went bust - its not easy peasy trying to get your money back and flights rebooked.

Booked separately for next year and tbh I don't think i'd do it again unless things changed within the flight/holiday business.

You have been given back luck john! To any newbies interested in doing this I would advice take ATOL insurance out and try to go with big companies, I know the irony of me saying that when Thomas cook are struggling, but at least it is less common to go bust rather than smaller companies.

[dragon]

If you're worried on what to do don't be scared to book it all separate, it's easy peasy!

It may be easy peasey booking it but in the last 2 years i've been caught up twice in companies who have went bust - its not easy peasy trying to get your money back and flights rebooked.

Booked separately for next year and tbh I don't think i'd do it again unless things changed within the flight/holiday business.

I'm not worried any more as I intend to always book with a credit card.
If you use a card with 0% interest as we do, then you won't have to pay interest even if the company goes bust and your claim takes a few months to pay your money back. As well as this they'll pay the difference if your new arrangements cost more. So after having the advice on this forum I'm nowhere near as concerned as I used to be when booking. I used to think if I saw a good deal that it might be too good to be true. Now I know that if I book it and the company goes bust, I can book a replacement and get the additional costs back, so it would still be at the bargain price, so a win win really!

[john G]

If you use a card with 0% interest as we do, then you won't have to pay interest even if the company goes bust and your claim takes a few months to pay your money back.

That's not exactly true - if its covered by caa/atol your first claim is against them, not your card and believe me, they don't pay up within 2 months.

[viking pete]

Would agree with you John, if the CAA are involved it goes through them. Took me 18 months to get my cash back after the XL collapse.

Take care,
Pete.

[JT]

I don't understand what you mean about stay with the big companies as the small ones go bust

All there is now really are two "big companies"

The ones that went bust Goldtrail (brought more people to Turkey than any other company) Holidays 4u (Turkish specialist and were not small) Excel (also sold full packages and were most definitely not small) Scott Travel (another that was not small and has now opened under a different name after all blown over)

Any company can go bust if it takes too much on so it doesn't matter if you go diy or full package through a company as you don't know how that package is put together anyway

Both of the big two have just borrowed 200 million and 75 million quid from banks to keep them afloat

[dragon]

If you use a card with 0% interest as we do, then you won't have to pay interest even if the company goes bust and your claim takes a few months to pay your money back.

That's not exactly true - if its covered by caa/atol your first claim is against them, not your card and believe me, they don't pay up within 2 months.

I should have made myself clearer, I meant where there are no third parties involved. Obviously it takes longer if there is a third party. We made three separate claims with two different credit card companies after the failure of Aegean and each one was dealt with in a matter of weeks. The point I was trying to make was that even if they take a few months to sort out you won't lose out as 0% interest means no extra charges and Section 75 will give you the difference in the cost of the holiday, so you still pay the bargain price. The 0% rates with some cards are for 20 months.

Definitely agree with JT that any company can go bust whatever their size. Didn't the problem with the world's economy begin with one of the largest banks in America going bust in 2008, I think it was Lehmann Brothers? A lot of the bigger companies overstretch themselves which is one of the things that Thomas Cook did wrong by taking over High street travel agents.

[MichelleSmith]

I agree that any company can go bust, but it's more than likely smaller ones will go bust.

I'm referring to big companies such as Thompson, First Choice etc.

[dragon]

If it wasn't for the bail out by the banks last week Thomas Cook would have gone bust by now and they're a large company but even they're only safe until April 2013, that is unless something else happens. At least we all know what to do if another company goes into liquidation.