An Aegean ‘bun fight’ [mh200605]

Our story is almost identical to Alan Kings both in our dealings with Aegean Airlines and outcome so far.

We have holidayed in Greece twice a year, for many, many years and choosing independent travel by booking flights, ferries and hotels ourselves. We have enjoyed many memorable holidays in and then got married in Greece! We even started taking our son at the tender age of 8 months and he is now 12 years old.

We have previously flown with Easyjet, Thomas Cook and Thomsons with flight only tickets but this year chose to use Aegean Airlines. We have had a stressful 15 months of the care & loss of my mother in law from cancer and were really looking forward to some Greek island hoping in May and again in August.

Without boring you with all the details, the May flights got cancelled by Aegean and so the ‘bun fight’ began with many, many emails to & fro, resulting in having to take it to a Sec.75 claim with our credit card company and we are now waiting the outcome.

I think it is worthy of mention that when I first approached the bank (HSBC) I was told I by their Indian call centre that I could not claim on a ‘chargeback’ as the flights had been bought over 120 days before claim. I explained that:-

1.) This was not a ‘chargeback’ claim for a debit card but a Sec.75 claim on my credit card.
2.) This card is a Visa card and even if the 120 days did apply, that Visa sub clause conditions meant that the clock did not start ticking until the service had not been provided – 24th May.

Different cards companies have different conditions so check up on them!!!

We have just had our outgoing flight from Manchester/ Athens on 16th August cancelled by Aegean but the return flight 27th August is still at present available. When I spoke to them over the telephone, I was asked whether I was prepared to travel out from Heathrow as flights were still going from there but the logistics did not make that possible. Once again after many, many emails & telephone calls to Aegean, including emailing their CEO, resulting in it being passed down to their customer service team and getting a pre-generated reply, they now are not bothering to reply.

I am sure this set of August flights are going to result in another Sec.75 claim.

Unlike Alan, we have not bothered approaching the Hellenic Aviation Authority or European Commission as we are of the mind set that they too would just ‘fob’ us off and reading Alans site, it seems to be the case. This was done to speed the process up on the Sec.75 claim and have supported our claim with copies of all correspondence with Aegean and will wait and see if it is contested in the 45 days.

Throughout our communications with Aegean, like Alan we have quoted reg 261/04 etc, etc and got the same negative replies back, as Alan has experienced.

I could go on & on with details but I can feel my blood beginning to boil once again!!!!!!

[mh200605 – real name protected]

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