Additional Charges after a Holiday is paid for?!?

[omiomi]

My family have recently booked and paid for a holiday, it has been organised for some time and we have just been contacted to say that due to my sister been 17 at the time the cost of the holiday (accomodation) will be �900 more. The ages and all of the infomation were made available when the holiday was booked, can a company spring these excess charge on you? I would really appreciate a quik answer. Thank-you! :)

[Stu Dent]

It is clear that an 'ERROR' has been made. It's been made by you, or the holiday company, or by you both. Error is a ground that can have a contract set aside - i.e. as if it never happened. or, it can be relied upon to enforce the contract. Confused?

The route to solving this problem exists in idfentifying the party (or parties) who has made the 'ERROR', and whether it was induced or uninduced.

It seems that the holiday company have made the error - they thought your sister would be sixteen at the time of departure. But what led them to believe this?

If this error was induced by you, they win, and you pay - or at best you lose your deposit and they sell the holiday to someone else.

If their error was uninduced by you, you win, they pay, or, (if you wish) you get a refund. But proof may be a problem. Can you really prove that they knew your sister would be 17 at the time of departure even though they quoted a price for a sixteen year old as she was at the time the contract was concluded? My guess is that the contract will deal with such situations.

If the error was mutual, the contract never existed and whichever party is out of pocket should be refunded.

However, the terms and conditions of the paperwork will probably prevail. My money would be on the holiday company who have probably designed their contracts to contain standard conditions and exclusion clauses to deal with such questions as have been posed. They're smart like that!

[zig_zag]

sounds like a new con to me omiomi
they seem to be penalising the holiday makers for their own (deliberate) spelling mistakes on their forms
its happened to me this year
nearly got stung for 500 quid
query it

[omiomi]

Thank you for your answers, the holiday company have decided to offer a full refund or we can pay, this is likely to be perfectly legal, but we may still make a complaint.

[Neilzulu1]

I had a similar problem with direct holidays. I informed them of my kids ages but when the tickets came, they had put one of my kids age as 5 when he was four. I rang them up and they said i would have to pay for the new tickets as i had given them the wrong age.Luckily, i had kept all the original booking forms and sent them to direct who in turn done the tickets for free.

The moral of this story is that travel firms are no better than insurance firms. If they can squeeze 1 more pence from you - they will.