Hi
I'm very interested in your case as it's similar to mine (and approx. another 25 people). Unlike you, however, Thomson (Crystal) are offering us compensation of £50. The brief facts are as follows. We turned up on Sat 9th to board a 6.45am flight at Cardiff to Chambery, to go on a 7 day skiing holiday. We'd booked the whole holiday through Crystal (which included flights and accommodation, ski passes and ski lessons, amounting to £1700 for two). The plane made three attempts at landing at Chambery but couldn't due to bad weather. It then landed in Lyon. We spent around 7 hours sat on the plane at Lyon airport. Various plans were announced and then changed. We asked to disembark but they kept saying that Lyon airport authorities wouldn't let us. Eventually, they announced that we were going to fly back to Cardiff. WE arrived in the evening. They put us up in a very basic holiday (having informed us in a letter we received on disembarking that we were staying in a 5 * hotel!). We departed again in coach at 4am for the airport, boarded and then spent another 5 hours sat on Cardiff runway while they announced more plans before eventually saying that (around 11am) we'd fly to Milan later that day and then we'd be transported by coach across the Alps that evening/night to Chambery and then take subsequent coaches to our final destinations. The journey from Milan would be around 6 hours. The French roads were apparently on 'red alert' due to the weather. We decided to get off. We called our insurance but the claims office was closed on a Sunday and so we spoke to someone on the emergency line. They weren't sure that we were covered on our insurance but thought we were. We spoke to another person in the insurance and they gave the same response. So, we got off, pretty convinced we were covered. The holiday had been ruined. We'd spent 30 odd hours getting nowhere and had effectively lost 2 days of our holiday. We sent a long complaint letter to Crystal and requested a letter for our insurance stating the length of delay etc.
Now Crystal have just sent a letter to us stating that it wasn't their fault and offering us £50 as a goodwill gesture. They still haven't provided us (6 days later) with the letter for our insurance.
I thought they were at least obligated to return the cost of the flight. However, your case now suggests that there is a precedent for refunding the cost of the holiday. I can't believe - through no fault of our own - and taking reasonable steps all the way - that we now face having no holiday, losing a vast amount of money - and having spent this ruined week dealing this matter.
Please can you advise/help/share some information that will help us with this case?