We nearly missed our daughter's wedding, with no flight compensation

Times

11 hours ago

In September my wife and I were due to fly to Calgary in Canada for our daughter's wedding. When we got to Heathrow for our flight with the Canadian airline WestJet we were told that the plane's air conditioning had failed. We waited around for several hours while WestJet tried to fix it, but eventually the flight was cancelled.
WestJet offered us an alternative flight a few days later, which we turned down because it would have meant missing our daughter's wedding. We asked for a refund of our flight fare, which WestJet has paid. We then made alternative plans to fly to Calgary via Edinburgh the next day.
When we got back to the UK we claimed compensation of £520 each. WestJet finally responded six weeks later to say that it wasn't able to approve our claim. It said that our flight disruption was caused by unplanned aircraft maintenance that needed to be carried out for safety reasons, which meant that we are not entitled to compensation.
This was nonsense. All airlines flying from the UK are liable to pay a fixed amount of compensation for delays, unless they can claim there was an exceptional circumstance. I said its explanation was wrong, but it now appears to be ignoring me.
I then planned to get my money back through the small claims court but WestJet won't provide an address in England or Wales, which means that I can't issue a claim online. Instead I would need the court's permission to serve the claim in Canada and would also have to pay for someone to serve the papers over there. That doesn't seem worth it for a £1,040 claim. Surely it's not right that WestJet is able to dodge its responsibilities in this way?
Patrick, address supplied
Katherine Denham writes
Under UK law airlines must pay compensation if passengers travelling from the UK arrive at their destination three hours late. Each passenger can get up to £520 compensation, with the amount depending on the length of the delay, the amount of notice given and the distance of the flight. The only exception is if the delay or cancellation is caused by an extraordinary circumstance that was outside the airline's control, such as poor weather conditions.
As you know, unplanned maintenance does not count as an extraordinary circumstance, so I could see no reason why WestJet had not paid you the compensation you are entitled to.
WestJet initially told me that you had never submitted a claim. Given that it had rejected your claim last year, I thought this made no sense. When I pointed this out to the company, it then explained that it thought you had claimed under Canada's Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR). Under those rules, compensation doesn't apply when flights are cancelled due to a 'situation that's within the airline's control but which is required for safety purposes'.
Yet you showed me an email sent to WestJet that made it clear that you were claiming under the EU legislation EC261, which the UK rules are based on, so I thought it was very strange that it believed you were claiming under Canadian law.
WestJet couldn't explain why it had logged this as an APPR claim, but thankfully I was able to get the company to pay you the £1,040 compensation you were owed.
It said: 'WestJet sincerely apologises to the guests for their experience. We're grateful that Patrick has received his due compensation and can put this matter to rest.'
You said: 'Thank you, it's amazing how fast companies move when you step in. I now wonder how many of the hundreds of other people on the flight were paid the compensation they are entitled to.'
I stopped driving at 95. Will I ever see my insurance refund?
In April I told my car insurer LV that I had sold my car. I shall soon be 95 and, after many decades of trouble-free motoring, I decided to quit while I was ahead and stop driving.
LV agreed to refund the rest of my annual car insurance premium, amounting to £417. It said it would send this money to my HSBC credit card, which I had used to pay the original premium. I told LV that this would not work because HSBC had closed that account last August.
I was assured that once the payment had bounced back to LV, it would contact me for instructions as to where to pay this refund. When I didn't hear anything, I called LV a week later and was told that the payment had not been returned by HSBC. LV said I should speak to HSBC and gave me a reference number to try to trace the payment.
But HSBC said it had no evidence of £417 ever having been sent. I went back to LV to make a complaint, but have not heard back.
I am spending hours on the telephone trying to sort out what would appear to be a relatively straightforward transaction. This is very stressful, particularly when, in this age of electronic banking, one would have reasonably expected my £417 to have been refunded within days, if not minutes. I'm exasperated.
Peter, Dorset
Katherine Denham writes
I thought it was very unfair of the two companies to send you from pillar to post to retrieve your money.
It's normal for companies to make refunds to the original payment card — if the payment bounces back, the firm should then get in touch to confirm your new payment details.
I spoke to Allianz, the parent company of LV General Insurance, which said it had sent the money: 'While we're sorry for the time and inconvenience this caused, our service team followed our anti-money laundering processes.'
So where was your refund? It turned out that HSBC had the payment after all. Usually a transaction contains information to help a bank return it to the sender, but this particular payment didn't. As HSBC didn't know where to send the money, it kept it in a holding account until it knew what to do with it. When it later established that the money belonged to you, it sent it to your active HSBC credit card.
There were clearly some communication issues with the bank, and HSBC acknowledged that you were also disconnected during one call. In light of this it has given you £75 as a gesture of goodwill.
HSBC said: 'This is an unusual case where a refund was sent back to a closed credit card without sufficient information for us to send it on. We are pleased the money has now been sent to its rightful home and we wish our customer all the best following his 75 years of incident-free driving.'
You said: 'Please accept my grateful thanks for the part you played in this strange affair.'
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