A FURIOUS family has been forced to cough up an extra £500 to save their long-awaited holiday after an easyJet mistake threatened to derail their plans.
Donna Bennett, of Rochford, and her 12-strong family party, first booked flights to Faro, Portugal, with easyJet in August 2020.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, their flights have been rolled back, with the Bennett’s settling on an August 13 take-off date to revive a once annual family tradition put on hold by Covid.
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Their dream holiday finally seemed within touching distance, before Ms Bennett, to her horror, found one of their three bookings on the flight – for eight of the party – had been cancelled and refunded without her permission.
“At no point did I ask them to cancel those flights, I already have two existing bookings on the same plane, and they’re not cancelled, so why would I cancel these,” an exasperated Ms Bennett asked.
The mix-up came when the 49-year-old enquired about a refund for the extra legroom she had booked after easyJet changed their seats to standard ones.
“Losing the legroom wasn’t an issue she said, I just wanted to get my money back for them," she said.
But instead, it seems the airline refunded the whole booking, leaving her facing a mad rush to save the long-awaited family holiday.
“I was in tears, I needed these flights and we have waited so long for this family holiday because of the pandemic, and it looked in danger,” Ms Bennett continued.
Now, the family face a £500 bill, after having to replace the refunded £3,800 booking with a more expensive £4,300 booking on a later flight.
Ms Bennett said: “I had half my family going on holiday, and half not, so I just had to pay up as nobody at easyJet seemed like they were going to help me, it was just an absolute mess.”
An easyJet spokesman said: “We are very sorry that Ms Bennett’s booking was cancelled in error, this was due to an agent misunderstanding of her request and so we have contacted with Ms Bennett to resolve this for her and provide a gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience this has caused.”
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