ebookers.com

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A description of the good or service offered and what happened.
I have bought from ebookers a pair of return flight tickets from Manchester to Rio at 9.30pm on Tuesday 9/9/2009. Shortly after I have found that the same ticket was cheaper elsewhere (eg, at lastminute.co.uk and expedia.co.uk). No problem, I thought, for ebooker offers a "Best Price Guarantee".

The next morning I phoned them and was asked to say where I had found a cheaper offer. I mentioned expedia.com, the ebookers representative checked expedia's website and told me "yes, print this out and send it to us", which I promptly did. The email went to them at 12pm.

However, and contrary to what I heard in that first phone call, there was a problem with that expedia.com offer: the first leg of the return flight (Rio to Paris CDG) was two hours earlier than in my ebookers reservation, in which I hadn't specified any preferred time (route, airline and class were the same).

Ebookers wrote to me saying that the first printout was no good at 10.37pm, 25 five hours after my initial booking. I then sent them another printout (this time from lastminute.co.uk, which I had also saved when I realised the price difference), in which every single detail of the trip was EXACTLY as in my purchase. Then their answer was "as you're sending this more than 24 hours after your booking, no refund".

The refund I was expecting should be of 192 or 476 pounds, depending on what other price the ebookers one was compared to.

In my opinion, ebookers has been unfair. Whether they have also been dishonest, that is something I'll leave for you to decide.

What have you attempted to do so far?
1) First phone call to ebookers (see description): at 11.30pm on Wednesday 10/9.

2) Email to ebookers (bestprice@ebookers.com) with expedia.com cheaper offer: at 12pm on Wednesday 10/9. Reply sent at 10:37pm on Wednesday 10/9, not read until following morning.

3) Morning of Thursday 10/9: reply sent to ebookers' email, including lastminute.com offer (see description). Email reply from ebookers an hour later, followed by phone call to ebookers, another email to bestprice@ebookers.com, another reply, a phone call to ebookers - all of this about the alleged "took to long to file the necessary documents". Then email to customer care.

4) Afternoon of Thursday 10/9: phone calls to Consumer Direct followed by phone call to ebookers and email to customercare@ebookers.com. No reply to any of the emails sent to customercare@ebookers.com.

Why you feel your complaint has not been fairly or properly addressed by the company?
I initially had an ebookers representative telling me that presentation of the expedia.com offer would be enough for me to obtain a refund. I sent that to ebookers imediately. By mistake or whatever, that advice was incorrrect. I was only informed of this 25 hours after my purchase, and when trying to send a more appropriate document, was told that I could not do this then , for more than 24 hours had ellapsed since my purchase. I note that the other replies were sent to me much quicker (1-2 hours).