Andrea Coscelli

On 26 May, the CMA announced that Truly Holdings Ltd, the company that operates Teletext Holidays, and its sister company, the travel operator Alpharooms.com, signed undertakings committing to address failures to refund package holiday customers for holidays cancelled during the pandemic.

These undertakings required Truly Holdings to use all reasonable endeavours to pay outstanding refunds to passengers at the latest by the end of August, and going forward to ensure that refunds due for package holidays cancelled after the date of the undertakings are paid promptly and no later than 14 days after cancellation.

After reviewing Truly Holdings’s final report on progress with repayments, the CMA is concerned that some customers whose package holidays were cancelled since it signed up to the undertakings have not been repaid within the 14 days required by the law. Although Truly Holdings has paid back a significant number of customers within this two-week period, too many have been left waiting longer for the refunds due to them.

The CMA is also concerned that Truly Holdings has not done enough to repay customers who were already owed refunds at the time the undertakings were given.

As a result of the CMA’s action, Truly Holdings has paid £7.2 million of the £7.8 million owed to package holiday customers, but almost £600,000 in refunds remains outstanding. Truly Holdings has reported that the outstanding amount is owed to customers whose current bank details it does not have and whom it has been unable to refund through their original payment method because the purchases were made more than a year ago.

The CMA does not consider that enough has been done to ensure that Truly Holdings is able to provide refunds to package holiday customers with outstanding claims. In addition, the CMA does not consider that Truly Holdings has done enough to make sure that it pays all refunds that may in future become due within 14 days, as required by law.

Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, said: “It is unacceptable that some package holiday customers are still not receiving refunds within the timeframe that they are legally entitled to.

“While we are pleased that many consumers have now received the refunds they were due because of our intervention, we are clear that Truly Holdings must comply with the law. Unless it urgently takes steps to address the failures we have identified, we will take court action.

“Although the CMA does not currently have powers to impose fines for this, this is the kind of issue that could be resolved at pace and met with fines if the CMA receives the consumer powers that the Government is currently consulting on.”