Agent wins social media victory over Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook has agreed to honour a booking for an incorrectly priced holiday after a travel agent vented his anger on Facebook.

Andrew Earle, of Yorkshire-based Freedom Travel Group member Earles World of Travel, booked four students on a self-catering package to Marmaris in Turkey, travelling on June 19, at £100.99 per person, but the correct price should have been £379.

The booking was made and confirmed on Saturday but automatically cancelled by Thomas Cook on Monday morning when it realised the error.

Earle took to the travel industry Facebook forum Travel Gossip to complain, saying that Cook should honour the booking.  He had earlier complained to ABTA, which said the tour operator was within its rights to cancel the holiday after making a genuine pricing error.

However, following intervention by Freedom Travel Group head Kelly Cookes, Thomas Cook agreed to honour the booking.

"This is travel doing the right thing," said Earle. "I was even thinking of honouring the booking myself for the sake of my reputation, but thanks to social media, Thomas Cook has been prepared to sort this out."

A spokesman for Thomas Cook said: "This was an isolated incident, and we apologise for any confusion or inconvenience that this has caused.  It is never our intention to disappoint our customers or our trade partners, who should rest assured that a full investigation is being conducted with a view to preventing  any similar issue occurring in the future."

Agents on the Travel Gossip thread were quick to praise Thomas Cook for making a u-turn, but they said the operator was not alone in cancelling holidays after making a pricing error, pointing to similar experiences with Thomson.

Several agents are understood to have booked  long-haul packages with Thomson which were accidentally priced at £249 instead of £1249 last month, but the operator cancelled the bookings.

Thomson product director Mark Hall said: "This sort of error is very, very rare but when if and when it happens we would treat the customers fairly."

Agents have called on ABTA to be more clear in its guidance on pricing errors, saying it’s a grey area.

A spokesman for the association said: "Mistakes can happen with prices and, where they do, the booking will be void. In such cases, the tour operator cannot insist on the customer paying the higher price but, at the same time the customer cannot insist on having the holiday at the wrong, lower, price."