My brother passed away before his stag party, but Booking.com and Ryanair haven’t paid me back

In November 2022, I booked flights from Manchester to Dublin for nine people, to celebrate my brother’s stag party.

The trip was planned for July this year, but sadly my brother died suddenly in April.

I emailed the airline, Ryanair, in May and attached a copy of the death certificate. I received an email saying I was to receive a full refund, which would amount to £838, within five to seven working days, back on to the HSBC card on which I paid.

That never happened. Ryanair claims it has sent the money, but HSBC has no record of it. I have sent around 10 emails to Ryanair, made 10 phone calls and raised a number of complaints through the Ryanair app. 

Bereavement: This reader sadly lost his brother before he was due to get married. He later tried to get the money back for flights booked for the stag party – but was unable to 

I have received no help or support and have been passed around the call centre to various people who have no intention of helping me, or allowing me to speak to anyone in authority.

I have been asked to do all sorts of ridiculous things that I don’t even understand such as attaching a picture of my Ryanair ‘wallet’ to a live chat, and also attached pictures of my bank statements which I am not really comfortable with. 

I have seven other people waiting on their refund. We all feel it is a matter of principle and Ryanair should honour its promise. A.S, Manchester

Helen Crane of This is Money replies: I am very sorry for your loss. 

Having to cancel what should have been a fun celebration in such tragic circumstances must have been awful, and I was upset to hear that you haven’t been treated with the compassion you deserve.

You first went to Ryanair in May this year to ask for a cancellation of the flights and your money back, attaching your brother’s death certificate as proof of your claim. 

In June, you got an email saying that the £838 had been refunded back to the card you paid on. But you checked with your bank, HSBC, and it said the money wasn’t there. 

When Ryanair insisted that it was, and asked to see your bank account, you contacted me. 

On further inspection, I saw that your email from Ryanair included a generic section at the bottom which said that, if you had booked with a third-party travel agent, you needed to go to them for the refund.

I can completely understand how you might have missed or misunderstood this, given everything else you were dealing with. 

You then told me you booked your flights on the Go to Gate website, part of Booking.com, and I explained that this meant the money had been paid back to them. 

Of course, someone at Ryanair could have taken the time to work this out and explain it to you personally, rather than wasting your time asking you to attach things to live chats. 

This refund rule often catches out customers, as they presume the responsibility for their refund still lies with the airline they travelled on – but in fact it does not. 

If a customer pays Booking for their flights, and then Booking pays Ryanair, any refund will ordinarily have to go back through that same process.

I have previously advised readers against using third-party booking sites if there isn’t a material difference in the price, as going direct can make it easier to get your cash back if something goes wrong.

While Ryanair wasn’t ultimately responsible for paying you your refund, I do think the situation could have been explained to you much better. 

Waiting game: A.S kept checking his online bank to see if the refund had arrived, after Ryanair insisted that it had been paid – but it turned out to have gone to Booking.com instead

‘This passenger requested a refund for this flight […] on 13 May and Ryanair processed the refund in full (£837.56) to the card on the booking on 23 May.

‘Unfortunately, this passenger booked this flight through an unauthorised OTA [online travel agent] who Ryanair has no commercial agreement with and who provided Ryanair with incorrect payment details for this passenger. 

‘As a result, despite Ryanair issuing this passenger’s refund correctly, it did not go directly to the passenger (as their card was not used on the booking), but to the OTA.

‘This is a prime example of the issues faced when customers book using OTAs and not directly with the airline. To avoid these implications, Ryanair urges customers to always book their flights directly.’

Once you found out Booking.com held the keys to your cash, I’m afraid to say they weren’t much more helpful. You told me you called them three times over two weeks and were simply told the request was still being processed.

In July, you were told by Booking that the refund had been paid back to your card –  but again, that wasn’t true.

Booking.com’s customer service staff told you it had only received the money back from Ryanair in July, while Ryanair said the transfer had happened in May. I’m not surprised that you couldn’t make head nor tail of it. 

I also approached Booking to explain your sad situation, and ask it to pay the money back as quickly as possible.

Thankfully, I managed to get a clearer answer – though not the one you wanted. 

It told me that while you had been waiting for your refund, you had also started a chargeback with your bank.

Companies usually don’t want to refund people who have started a chargeback, because they could end up having to pay the money twice – if they pay your refund out of pocket, and then the chargeback is also later approved.

A spokesman said: ‘We are sorry for the delay that this customer has encountered in obtaining a refund under what we appreciate are extremely difficult circumstances. 

‘Upon investigation, we can see that the refund was received from the airline on July 14 and not on May 23, but because the customer had raised a chargeback request via his bank, this has unfortunately further delayed the process as we’re unable to process the transaction while this is ongoing. 

‘We apologise for the inconvenience that this has caused and would advise the customer to contact his bank for an update on the situation.’

Banking on it: In the end it was a chargeback initiated through the reader’s bank, HSBC, which got the £838 back for A.S and his friends

It told me that if you cancelled your chargeback, it could pay you the money. But you told me didn’t want to do that. You felt you had been messed around enough by these companies, and weren’t confident that the refund would actually materialise. 

You said you would prefer to wait and see if HSBC came through, and I completely understood your point of view.

Your instincts may have been right, as in the end it was the chargeback that eventually bore fruit a couple of weeks later. You got the £838 back in full.

However, you told me you wanted me to ‘name and shame’ Ryanair and Booking for not helping you in your hour of need.

I do think you have a point here. Booking seems to be blaming you for starting the chargeback – but if you had been paid back promptly you would never have needed to. 

I don’t know who is right about when the refund was paid from Ryanair to Booking – in May or July. 

What I do know is that, as soon as they saw the nature of your request, both firms should have pulled the correct strings to get you your money back, instead of messing you around and blaming you for using a third-party booking agent, or starting a chargeback. 

Or of course, one of them could have thrown out the usual rules and paid you back as a gesture of goodwill, given your exceptional and sad circumstances. 

In my opinion, £838 is not a large amount of money if it means easing the burden on a recently bereaved customer.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk