Lastminute.com apologises as competition watchdog threatens legal action over £1m in unpaid refunds

Lastminute.com has apologised to customers after the UK’s competition watchdog threatened the online travel firm with court action unless it quickly pays out £1 million in outstanding refunds.

In late November the company signed a legal undertaking with the Competition and Markets Authority to pay back around £7 million to more than 9,000 customers whose package holidays were cancelled last year due to the pandemic.

The CMA set a deadline of January 31 to pay in full, but it said today that refunds totalling more than £1 million are still due 2,600 customers. It said that unless the money is paid out within seven days, court action will follow.

The watchdog said it also found that the company failed to meet its ongoing commitment to repay all customers entitled to a refund within 14 days of their package holiday being cancelled on or after December 3 - and that it had told some customers to try to recoup funds directly from airlines, which breaches travel package regulations.

CMA chief executive, Andrea Coscelli, said: "It is wholly unacceptable that thousands of Lastminute.com customers are still waiting for full refunds for package holidays despite the commitments the company signed with us.

"We take breaches of commitments extremely seriously. If Lastminute.com does not comply with the law and pay people their outstanding refunds quickly, we will take the company to court."

The company said it had not met the CMA's deadline due to the "unforeseen" third lockdown which "further impacted the travel sector and added extra pressure to an already challenging process".

Lastminute.com MD, Andrea Bertoli, responded to the CMA’s announcement, saying: “We sincerely apologise to all customers still waiting for their package holiday refunds and we are making every effort to resolve any remaining delays customers are facing.

"We had already outlined to the CMA a detailed action plan to manage all pending cases and continue to work to get all customers repaid.”

The company said that it directed customers to Ryanair as the airline "publicly informed customers to request refunds directly" irrespective of their booking.