Who is the insurer?
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Their website statesā¦
All of our policies contain exclusions relating to an epidemic or pandemic and also known events in the mass media. Therefore it is unlikely that any claim for cancellation of your trip (to anywhere in the world) will be covered if it relates to the coronavirus. However, we will assess each claim based on its individual facts and circumstances and policy terms and conditions.
It appears they will access each claim on its merits. I would also be arguing that the tour has changed schedule due to the coronovirus and that you are unable (with proof why) to take the rescheduled tour.
As another option, the Tripadeal T&Cs neither have why a refund should be provided in your case, or why a refund is an exclusion. It is somewhat silent on the matter. I would be asking them on what grounds, namely under their T&Cs that a refund is not possible.once you know the grounds, it may then be possible to argue a case of why it should be granted,
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Tripadeal are clearly trying to bluff customers. I have had the Deal removed from the āMyDealsā section of my account, which means they have cancelled the trip (in my mind anyway). I am also not impressed with the lack of customer service from them. I am also publishing reviews where I can. Buyer beware! We have said that we would accept a deferral of the same Itinerary at a future date (as the credit note just means spending more money with them on a different location that we do not want to visit and also cannot make the leave arrangements). I am going down the Credit Card transaction dispute path - based on not receiving the service that I paid for.
Clearly, there are many customers who are not agreeing to the credit note, as they have extended the deadline again. I will not stop until a refund is received. Very poor form for an Australian company. If this was a Bank, it would be all over the news headlines 
Not happy. Good luck to you and your mum too.
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Totally agree with you on this. We paid through zip pay. Tomorrow I will he contacting them. I am tempted to contact ACA regarding this. Thank you for sharing and I will keep you updated and I hope to hear you get the same outcome
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I have been agitating for a full refund for our China trip, departing late April since early February. My requests have fallen on deaf ears with TripADeal pasting their standard response into my messenger. When talking on phone they are clearly scripted and if the question is too difficult they go silent.
I have contacted my bank for a charge back on my credit card but evidently I canāt claim this until post date of booked departure. The bank is also requesting all documentation including the itinerary. As we know TripADeal have ignored requests for this information.
Last week I felt bullied into accepting a credit note as I feared I would end up with nothing. There isnāt any other trip I would want to take up as they are too restrictive and expensive. I can arrange better deals for myself through loyalty programs.
I do think TripADeal need to be exposed for their shoddy business ethics.
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We contacted Trip A Deal on the day our holiday was due to begin, (10 March 2020) as we had no news from them. The young woman from Customer Service obviously had be told to say that the trip would still go ahead but was to be re-routed despite the Italian PM saying Italy was in lock down and Marise Payne saying Australians should āre thinkā their travel to Italy. The Cruise Line offered a reschedule and the Airline, also offered a reschedule if the 'Travel Agent" ie Trip A Deal organised it. However we have been offered nothing from Trip A Deal, no emails, no general announcements, no phone call. Nothing.
Trip A Deal did not consider the well being of paying customers, nor did they deliver on the goods/services we expected after paying over $7000 in July 2019. We paid for something that we did not get. A refund or postponement should be offered.
Extremely poor business practices.
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26 day tour to Turkey/Egypt/Jordan $5999
Note: didnāt get to do the Jordanian part of the tour because if we went there we were to be quarantined for 14 days.
Trip a deal really need to revise their itinerary.
They quote 5 starā accommodations for the entire trip, definitely not the case. I would say most were only 3* and the only 2 that came a little close was the hotel CCR in Cappadocia and the Suhan 360 in Kasadasi, both in Turkey.
They quote tipping amounts you are expected to pay in Turkey and Jordan being $5us/day which is fine but the Egypt tipping was āat your own discretionā again this is not the case. We had to pay the $5us/day fee upfront, apparently to pay for tips fuel etc to the tour guide (company policy) and this does not cover his tip.
The tour is full on, loved every minute of it and local guides know their stuff. Days would basically start at 9am sometimes earlier and you wouldnāt get back to hotel until 4.30pm.
The Bosphorus cruise they offer is pretty poor so Iād suggest leaving it out.
Do do the balloon flight in CAPPODOCIA itās expensive but amazing and well worth it.
There are 3 other optional tours in Egypt.
The light show and meal at Giza about $45us my opinion would probably give it a miss.
The balloon flight $120us not sure exactly where but over pyramids. Those in our group who did it said it didnāt compare to Cappadocia.
The third was a tour to a Nubian village to see how they live that was about $45us. No one did it one our tour so canāt comment.
Lunch buffets had a good selection - soup, every meal chicken/fish/meat, hot veg, salads, fruits and local sweets. Set menus also were mostly good but some food was served cold and some salads had been left on the table too long leaving them limp. I donāt eat meat/chicken and we had a couple of vegetarians they always had a separate meal for us if it was a set menu.
We were here during the corona virus and the last 7 days of our trip had to be cancelled because we couldnāt get into Jordan without having to stay in quarantine for 14 days. At first between CRAFT and TripADeal no one wanted to take responsibility and no one believed we werenāt allowed into Jordan. But I have to admit the 2 companies came to the party at organising pick up from airport to a beautiful hotel not far from the airport (Concorde El Salam Hotel Cairo-would recommend staying here) TripADeal very quickly organised flights, at our own expense, but no one really cared because all we want to do is get home. A tour has also been organised for us because we have a full day here before we head home.
I donāt think we would consider booking another TripADeal holiday unless they gave you a choice of star options for hotels. Iād prefer to pay the extra .
Have now done a Webjet tour and TripADeal tour. Webjet is more expensive but quality is better. TripADeal is a budget tour company.
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Tripadeal Georgia Armenia and Azerbaijan
Hi
Has anyone out there been caught up in the Tripadeal decision to now encourage you to defer the packaged trip to G/A/A to a later date for the cost of around $500pp. They have given us a week to decide then the offer is off the table. I booked and paid fully for this trip about 12 months ago and now they are telling me I can defer the trip for another $1000 or take the risk of not getting my money back if I continue. The trip is due to depart in June and obviously has been caught up in the Corona Virus issue. It has cost us over $10,000 for both of us.
I believed I was purchasing a packaged holiday (as the broucher would lead you to believe), Tripadeal are saying that they only acted as travel agents organising the trip for us and they will try and recoup as much as they can from all the individual suppliers. My understanding is that travel insurance will not pay out if the company you deal with is not refunding the money only if the company goes broke .
I can empathise with TADs problems but it is a bit rough asking customers to wear the problem after they have had the monies for now on a year.
If we accept the offer then it is our problem and we can kiss good by to the $1000, if we donāt then I believe we may have some recourse under Australian consumer protection. However dealing with Tripadeal on a one to one puts them in the box seat to bluff individuals . I believe what they are doing is morally and legally wrong. I dealt with them, not any other 3rd parties, it was a package I purchased from them and they should be refunding the full amount if they cannot supply. A lot of other companies are offering money back or deferral at no cost to the customer. I would think that they could recoup their losses through their insurance which they need to have as accredited travel suppliers. Is this just an attempt to minimise their insurance premium by get us to pay for it via the $500 surcharge?
Any thoughts?
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Hi @Dodger52, thanks for letting us know about your issue, Iāve moved your post over here as itās the best place to get thoughts on the issue. You might find some info at the bottom of Coronavirus and travel insurance is useful.
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Exactly what happened to us
Roodsy - 18 day USA, Alaska, Canada (celebrity cruise) depart Sydney 14 May
Hi we are a group of 6, is anyone else on this tour? has anyone heard any information from tripadeal about this tour. Does tripadeal give refund to accounts? We were flying with qantas and now Qantas has cancelled all flights until end May.
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They have tried to rip off our group, ultimatums given, not returning phone calls, behaving as if they are above the lawā¦such bad business practice
Iāve set up a group on FB ā TripAcon Trip a deal ā and Iāll be filtering their false staff member accounts. The more people realise they are being ripped the better.
They have staff writing good reviews!
Hi @Msds, welcome to the community.
Would you be able to provide further details of how Tripadeal has āripped offā your group?
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Giving us an ultimatum that we have to take up there ā peace of mind offer ā a credit minus $2000, if we donāt take up this offer we might not get anything.
Still sending emails that we are going soon when itās impossible to leave the country.
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We toured Egypt as a package with Jordan and Turkey which were both lovely but Egypt was way below expectations. No Wi-Fi, no water and the Wi-Fi sold to us for $30US cut out at 500mb instead of 15gb. TrilpaDeal responseā¦not our problem!! Never again!!
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TripaDeal confirmed by phone on 09/03/20 and 10/3/20 that is was safe to travel to Europe for 18 days ETD 10/3/20. We were informed that we could cancel if we chose to but there was no refund and no insurance would cover us if we did. The choice was blowing $7674 or go albeit reluctantly and apprehensively. TripaDeal sent us on our way on 10/03/20 21:45 to Europe. Once we were mid-air, they emailed us to tell us that our Cruise from Rome was cancelled and we would be returning to Australia on 18/3/20. They did not mention they had other tour groups in lockdown in Europe before they let us take off. They assured us that our land content itinerary would proceed via other locations. This did not eventuate. We spent the whole time in Budapest. Collectively we (26 in total) decided to streamline communications and made a group phone call at Wed, 11 March 6.37pm We got a non-commital response and were assured of a callback that did not occur.
Our itinerary was shrinking there was a further concern we would be trapped they proposed that we could travel via Munich to return. We checked out of our hotel only to check back in again after a mutiny from the passengers.
Our return flights from ROM-DUB were cancelled. We decided to send an email on behalf of the group Fri, 13 Mar 2020, 21:32 demanding action we received no reply.
Sun, 15 Mar. 2020, 4:00 am Euro Time TripaDeal sent us an email that stated: āWe are also finding that many of you affected are starting to find alternative methods home independently.ā So, we were on our own and had to book and pay for flights individually to get home on 16/3/20. It was a National Public Holiday in Hungary that made it even worse the phone queue was impossible, so we had approximately 2 hours to book a flight, pack in a hurry and get on the bus by 11:00 am to get to the airport for a 3.15 pm flight. On return they would not respond to requests for a refund of the flight costs nor have they contacted us to address the matter of not receiving what we paid for. The failure to reply in any way caused undue suffering and stress. The flights were not full so Iād like to know why the company couldnāt rebook it for us. In March We couldnāt get any response from Budapest and have not received a reply to date despite multiple emails since returning home.
The tour group departing 4 days after ours had their tour cancelled with a full credit given to them for the package. The tour before us was locked down and had their flights home paid for.
TripaDeal have neglected their duty of care to the customer in that they had an obligation to avoid acts or omissions, which could be reasonably foreseen to injure or harm people. They assured me that everything was fine on the ground that it was exaggerated in the media and their staff on the ground said it was okay. This is a complete fabrication because the Italian tour guides had relayed to TripaDeal the previous tour was in lockdown. Thus, it was reasonably foreseeable that such action (or inaction) would result in a risk of injury to the customer. This means that they knowingly and deliberately sent us into a situation that they knew was risky and did not seek to mitigate the risks by cancelling the tour. TripaDeal in full knowledge of the situation on the ground could reasonably foresee that the trip would not be completed as per the itinerary. We had expected them to cancel it they refused to do so instead they advised me to ākeep checking your emailsā which I did right up until I stepped off the aerobridge at the airport onto the plane at Sydney Airport. Once we were in the air they emailed me to inform me that the cruise was cancelled. It was a deliberate decision to proceed with the tour in dangerous circumstances and can only be assumed to be either greed or incompetence.
We are significantly out of pocket and did not get anything like what we paid for.
As at beginning of 4/5/20 we have now been offered a TripaDeal Gesture of goodwill - we get to pay approximately $4500 in extra costs to revisit the tour with dates as early as NOV 2020 or FEB/MAR 2021 offer expiring end of 2021 with no prospect of travel and onerous conditions. There is no offer of compensation for our out of pocket airfares and they are retaining our prepaid fares even our preferred seating costs of $100 paid directly to Emirates is going to TripaDeal instead of my credit card. I did not take those flights and they have even more on our money. Currently lodged with Fair Trading, soon to be NCAT, ACCC and the class action with Slater and Gordon. The total cost to date of this debacle exceeds $11000.!(upload://fEhkIdXFXvXDqxi41558EEcDdWU.jpeg)
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Did you have any luck on the credit card charge back for your trip?
Sadly no. Visa are choosing to say I decided not to travel, even though my dispute is because I was never issued any travel documents. Not happy
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Your experience is identical to ours!!! Departed 9 March on 26 day turkey Egypt Jordan tour only to be cancelled on day 7 charged an additional $2000 to fly home ā¦ I had contacted a TAD just days before departure and they promised that our safety was their top priority and that our 26 day tour was safe to continue!!! They have offered us a credit of $1400 each which is an insult as we paid $7000 + tips per person they also suggested we go online line and book our next TAD trip where we can use the credit but also need to pay for next trip in full at time of booking!!!.. this trip was extremely expensive for only 7 days out of the 26 days that were booked!!! Will think twice before booking another TAD travel package!!!
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