TONY HETHERINGTON: Booking.com trip didn’t exist!

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail’s chief investigator on Sunday, battling the reader’s corners, revealing the truth behind closed doors and achieving victories for those who haven’t made money. Read below how to contact him.

Mrs AS writes: We booked villas in Turkey through Booking.com. com for our group of 19 people, but when we arrived the owner told us to leave because we didn’t have a reservation. He then called the police.

We had paid €8,400 (about £7,300) but had to spend two days in emergency shelter for €2,000 (about £1,740) and another €6,000 (about £5,200) in new villas. This was a very expensive nightmare vacation.

We have requested a refund from Booking.com and hope you can help us.

Tony Hetherington replies: Your party of 19 included four small children and you prepaid for three villas.

Just a few days before your holiday you received confirmation of the arrangements to take you from the airport to the villas in Kalkan. But when you landed there was no transport waiting for you, and when you called the owner of the villas he denied that you had a reservation and told you not to go to the villas.

You went anyway and found the owner waiting there. He called the police to have you removed and you spent seven hours at the local police station.

The police were actually sympathetic and helpful. They found hotel rooms for the next two nights and even gave you an online link that allowed you to successfully find new villas, although this meant paying again.

Meanwhile, there was confusion and contradiction as to why all this had happened. The owner of the original villas said he knew nothing about your booking and suggested that a previous owner had scammed you. But he gave a slightly different explanation to Booking.com and said you were double booked.

You contacted Booking.com and were assured that you would get the money back within 14 days. But no refund was received and you told me Booking.com explained that you didn’t have ‘documents in the correct currency’, whatever that means. At that point, after a month of trying to get your money back, you contacted me.

I asked Booking.com for comment and was quickly told: ‘We would like to apologize to the customer for their experience and the obvious inconvenience they were faced with. We will of course refund them the original booking and moving costs while we investigate further to understand what happened.”

But in a message to you, Booking. com said, ‘Booking.com does not own any rooms, apartments or other accommodation units, and we are not responsible for this situation.’

The company refunded all the money you originally paid and said it would pay you a further £819 “as a gesture of goodwill”.

The £819 was the cost of the two days you all spent in emergency hotel accommodation. There was nothing to make up for the thousands of pounds you spent from your savings and holiday money to pay for the replacement villas on site. And nothing to make up for a ruined vacation if you had paid for a restful one.

And, of course, none of this explains all that went wrong in the first place. Booking.com does not believe this was a scam and it confirmed that the Turkish real estate company employed by the owner of the villas had accepted your booking. Booking.com has removed the villas from its website.

The final result is that although you have now received just over £8,000, you still have around £1,000 out of pocket. And your trip was not the vacation you expected.

Booking.com emphasized: “To the extent permitted by mandatory consumer law, we are only liable for costs you incur as a direct result of a breach on our behalf.”

It added that the £819 it paid on top of the refund is “not an admission of responsibility”.

This is not reassuring.

My mortgage has been rejected – more than an unpaid phone bill of £36

SM writes: I sold my buy-to-let home, which had a Santander mortgage with three years to go with a five-year fixed rate.

This cost £10,000 but when I applied for a new mortgage within the three month break period allowed I was rejected.

The reason was a bad debt related to my property, which I bought from my late father’s estate.

Santander has reviewed the case and has now approved the mortgage application

Tony Hetherington replies: When you were told about the bad debts you realized that this was actually just £36 owed to Virgin. Your father died before he paid his phone bill, you bought the property and the £36 debt appeared in your name. This was enough to mean an automatic refusal from Santander to transfer your rental loan to new premises, even though you paid Virgin.

I asked Santander to look into this and a few days later the bank told me, ‘We have reviewed Mr M’s case as part of our routine appeals process and have approved the mortgage application, subject to an appraisal.’

As a gesture of goodwill, Santander also reimburses its valuation costs.

If you believe you have been the victim of financial misconduct, please write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Due to the large number of questions, no personal answers can be given. Only send copies of original documents, which unfortunately cannot be returned.