I expect that it will be up to the business to determine how they approach the current predicament that everyone finds oneself in.
As I outlined here, for our own business which has considerable cancellation booking losses (I try not to think about it), we have taken an approach where it is no-one’s fault the situation we are in and as a result, we shouldn’t be penalising a customer for something outside their control. It is worth noting that our cancellation policy would allow us to charge the customer for their cancellation…we have temporarily amended our policy to ensure that we have happy customers (and hopefully will stay with us in the future when things return to normal).
This is the wording we have sent to our customers:
We would like to let you know that we have made a temporary adjustment to our cancellation policy due to COVID-19. If for some reason you are unable to travel due to restriction imposed by government to control COVID-19, please let us know immediately on *** and we will cancel the booking with no penalty.
I expect that other businesses will treat their customers differently and will adopt their cancellation T&Cs strictly as written. These business will be judged by their customers who can’t fulfil their obligations due to matters outside their control (government bans or what is called a force majeure event)…and future customers will also judge them on how compassionate they are in the circumstance that prevail.
An avenue worth exploring it to let the business know that you will write a factual online comment about the experiences with the business and how you beleive that you have been treated unfairly when the cancellation is outside your control and the business can’t legally deliver the required services due to circumstances outside their and the customers control (when other business have taken the initiative to bend their cancellation policies - airlines are another example). This may prompt the business to reconsider its cancellation policy.
