Dear,
Last summer, I was booking a five -day sailing with high ship experience, a company based in Spain. For 1,350 euros, or $ 1,450, I would be a volunteer in the Atlantis crew, traveling between two ports to Italy. But eight days ago, I had a bad drop that resulted in multiple injuries, including eight seams on my face that doctors said I could not expose to the sun or water. The Tall Ship Ship Experience website clearly states that I could cancel for a full return up to seven days before the trip. But the company revealed that he was just a mediator and the Dutch organization is actually running the trip, Tallship Company, had different rules, according to which I was returned 10 percent. I offered to get credit for a future trip, no result. Finally, I questioned charges with my credit card issuer, American Express. But the tall experience of the ship provided a completely different set of terms to AMEX, saying we had canceled one day in advance. Charges were restored. Can you help? Martha, Los Angeles
Dear Martha,
This story is read as a larger list of trap of travel industries: an intermediary who avoids the responsibility, terms and conditions running Amok, a credit card reversal went wrong and the extreme obstacles to seeking justice against a foreign company. However, the documentation you sent was so complete and the company’s website so confusing that I was sure that the high experience of the ship would return you quickly.
Tallship Company did not respond to requests for comments, but did nothing wrong. It just followed his own terms and conditions that the high experience of the ship, as a middleman, should have made you clear to you. When you canceled, Tallship Company sent back a 10 % refund to high ship experience to send you.
That is why it is surprised by the fact that the stubborn (though extremely polite) spokesman for the experience of the high ships who responded to me on behalf of the organization based in Sevilla has repeatedly argued that although he expressed the regret of your disappointment. At one point he suggested that you should have purchased travel insurance, even when the company entered to adjust and update its site as we sent by email.
Before the changes, the site contained two separate and contradictory sets of terms and conditions: one for customers who bought through the English and French versions of the site and another in the Spanish version. (Confused, both documents were in Spanish.)
The English/French version – the one you had seen – promised customers a full travel refund was canceled more than seven days earlier. Spanish is much more complicated, offering different terms of cancellation for each ship. Atlantis offered your customers only 10 percent back.
Enter the persistent representative: “The terms and conditions in Spanish properly reflected the ship’s cancellation policy at a time when the customer made the reservation,” he wrote by email. “We are aware that at that time, the English version of the terms was not informed, which may have been confused. However, the official terms of the booking were properly implemented.”
In other words, customers should somehow know how to ignore a contract and search for another in a different part of the site, both in a language they may not read.
But I am not an expert in Spanish law for consumers, so I get in touch with two people who are: Marta Valls Sierra, head of Consumer Rights Practice at Marimón Abogados, a Barcelona -based law firm. And Fernando López Peña, a professor at Universidade da Coruña in a coruña.
They examined the documentation and each concluded that the high experience of the ship had violated the basic Spanish consumer statutes. When I passed their convincing points to the spokesman and notified that you were thinking of taking the company to the Spanish court of minor conditions, he finally stated that he would return the remaining € 1,215.
I felt a little willing to put so much pressure on this small company – in fact, a Nao Victoria non -profit arm, which takes advantage of various copies of historical ships – but the company should have been much more careful when it created its website.
“If under your terms and conditions you say that up to seven days before departure you have the right to cancel,” he said in an interview, “and the consumer comes and says,” I want to cancel “, you must cancel their trip and return their money.
It is a principle of the consumer law, he added that confusion or contradictory contracts are interpreted in favor of the consumer.
The other alarming issue with the site is that you had no way of knowing that your journey was not working with high ship experience. There was no such reference that I could find on the site, which is based on a marketing copy like this: “On board you will find out all you need to know will allow you to become one of our crew”.
Dr. López Peña, the law professor, wrote to me in an email that “the high experience of the ship is obliged to inform the consumer about the service it provides in an affordable and understandable manner, clearly indicating if it is intermediate”. He added that the tall experience of the ship “clearly” was presented as the operator of the ship in this case.
As I mentioned, the high experience of the ships began to update its site almost as soon as I come into contact, calling itself as a “purchase” of experiences and publishing the right terms and conditions (in the right languages) in its English and French pages.
But the high experience of the ship agreed with a refund only after sending the company a collection of legal analysis of the two experts. “We are committed to creating experiences on unique boats and not legal issues,” came the representative’s response. “Regardless of which party is right in this case, we would like to return the full amount. We look forward to resting it and focusing on continuing to improve customer experiences.”
You also said that the American Express had left you down, taking the company’s word over yours when you questioned the category. It is true that the document that sent high ship experience to AMEX (which was forwarded to you, who forwarded me), is wildly inaccurate, including only the terms favored by the company and saying that you only canceled one day in advance.
A spokesman for the American Express sent me a statement by saying that the company “takes into account both the card member and the prospects of the trader”. However, travelers should not mistake credit card issuers for cracking researchers who will not leave any stone to pursue travel justice. A billing request works best when the problem is simple – charged more than you agreed to pay or never agreed to pay at all. Asking your card issuer to make a deep dive on terms and conditions is a much greater shot.
And as we have seen before (and maybe see in this case) such debt requests often anger the companies involved in the point where they refuse to deal with you further.
If everyone else has failed, as I told you before the company, you could ask for a “Juicio Verbal”, Spain’s version of a small procedure through the video. It wouldn’t be easy, said Dr. López Peña. The cases of less than 2,000 euros do not require a lawyer, but they require you to have a foreign recognition number, fill in the forms in legal Spanish (AI can help) and find an interpreter to be by your side.
When I finally told you – in our 39th email! -You will receive a refund, you told me you were “almost looking forward to a Spanish experience of minor conditions”. I admire your spirit, though I suspect it would have been quickly broken by bureaucratic and linguistic obstacles.
If you need tips on a better travel plan that went wrong, Send an email to trippenup@nytimes.com.
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