Most of you are fortunate that you are only cancelling for yourselves and immediate family. I organised a private coach holiday in Llandrindod Wells for a club I belong to, and booked 43 people, who paid nearly £9000. Two couples cancelled for medical reasons after paying deposits, 2 of the others paid their balances and then had to cancel because they were called to hospital for operations; those operations have now been cancelled, so the unfortunates have lost both their holiday and their planned surgery. Of the remainder, 6 cancelled in the third week before departure (which would have been this sunny week!) and lost 55% as per T&Cs; if they had waited only a day or two, the company would have cancelled, and they would have been offered the choice of an eventual cash refund or a credit note for a future holiday. But acting in good faith at the time I advised them, if they were thinking of cancellation, to cancel then and lose 55% rather than wait till the next week and lose 75%.
So I am now in a position of having to deal with 8 people awaiting partial refunds, another 6 electing full refunds, and the rest who have taken credit notes. At the same time I need to collect deposits for our next holiday in October, which involves sorting out who will use their credit note and who was not booked for April but wants to go in October, and therefore has to pay a deposit in the normal way. Nearly everyone has made their mind up, thank heavens.
Fortunately I have had the first group of refunds for those who had cancelled before the company suspended all April holidays. That was paid to me in a cheque which I paid in after travelling to a nearby branch, as my own is closed. At least I have been able to arrange that the next refund group will be paid to me by bank transfer.
Also, I still had money left over as the 2 free places refund we got for exceeding a specified number of bookings. In normal times I use that surplus for the coach driver's tip and a cash distribution to everyone on the coach, and keep some for my own expenses (mostly stamps). But this year I was able to use it instead to help out some of those who had lost money on their cancellations.
The whole thing has been fraught and time-consuming, but it's a job I enjoy doing, and I am keeping on top of it. (The most delicate job is arranging the table seating for meals, as you have to be careful who you put with whom.) The main problem has been the speed at which developments followed one another over this last month. What I really regret is that I had hoped that our booked excursion, a scenic drive from Llandrindod to Aberystwyth via Devil's Bridge, would have allowed me to go on the Vale of Rheidol railway.
