Athena collapse leaves couple with £2,000 bill

The collapse of a London-based ABTA travel agent that organised its own tours has left a couple £2,000 worse off because the company billed the holidaymakers through an unbonded subsidiary. Athena Tours collapsed in August, but it has emerged the company took money off customers via a subsidiary, Easy Bed, which was not an ABTA member. One couple, the Pringles from Canterbury, spent nearly £2,000 on a holiday with Athena, paying by debit card over the phone. Only when they received the invoice did they see that the money had been debited by Easy Bed. After the collapse of Athena, ABTA refused to pay out to the Pringles, saying Easy Bed was a separate company and was not authorised to take funds from the couple’s bank account. The Pringles used a Royal Bank of Scotland debit card but RBS said they could not refund the money because the payment had been authorised by Mr Pringle and as far as they were concerned, the transaction was legitimate. The collapse follows the failure of short-break operator Travelscene, which had an unbonded subsidiary City Bedz. In this case ABTA decided, as a goodwill measure, to pay out to holidaymakers who had lost money, even though they were not legally obliged to do so. Commenting on the Pringles’ case, a spokeswoman for ABTA said: “We sympathise with them, but we can only pay out on Athena’s bond. Clearly Easy Bed was not authorised to take the cash.” Mr Pringle said: “I booked with an ABTA company in good faith.”