You can use the search function to find a range of UK Finance material, from consultation responses to thought leadership to blogs, or to find content on a range of topics from Capital Markets & Wholesale to Payments & Innovation.
Following the cessation of trading of Thomas Cook Group plc as of 23 September 2019, UK Finance has developed guidance on those protections available to consumers who have purchased travel or a holiday package using a debit or credit card.
We will update this page as more information becomes available.
The full list of companies included in the Thomas Cook Group are available here.
There is a mechanism for your card issuer to reclaim money from the retailer's bank where you do not get the goods or services you paid for, including if the retailer has gone out of business. This is called a?chargeback.
Chargeback is not a legal right. You should address a chargeback claim to your debit or credit card issuer, which in turn will put in a request to the retailer's bank. The process for managing these claims is determined by a set of rules from American Express, MasterCard or Visa. There are no guarantees your issuer will be able to recover the money through chargeback, but they will assess your claim fairly. With a chargeback, the value claimed cannot exceed the value of the original transaction.
If you booked your flight or holiday using a credit card and you do not have ATOL protection, you may also have what is known as Section 75 protection. This provision (part of the Consumer Credit Act 1974) protects you if you use your credit card to buy something costing more than £100 and up to £30,000.
There are certain requirements that need to be fulfilled for a Section 75 claim to be available. The company from whom you bought the goods or services must be the supplier of those goods and services.
You are legally entitled to get your money back if the supplier you bought the product or service from:
You are even able to claim if you only used your credit card to pay for part of the cost of what you bought. The protection may also cover any losses you have over and above the original amount you paid or if you incur additional reasonable costs to get back home. We strongly recommend customers talk to their credit card provider before incurring additional costs to see if they will be covered.
There are some instances where Section 75 does not apply, such as when goods or services are paid for by a secondary cardholder or are bought through an intermediary. This includes aggregators which sell on flight and hotel bookings. However, agencies like these often have their own payment protection systems in place.
More detail on chargeback and Section 75 claims can be found in our consumer guide. Customers should speak to their card issuer in the first instance before they incur further costs as these will need to be considered on a case by case basis.
Further information is available from:
ABTA: https://www.abta.com/news/thomas-cook-group
Civil Aviation Authority: https://thomascook.caa.co.uk/
Further information from individual debit and credit card issuers:
Barclays https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/insurance/travel/ThomasCook-incident/ or Telephone 03457 345 345
Capital One: Telephone 0333 0000 205
Co-operative Bank https://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/news/2019/thomas-cook
HSBC https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Lloyds: https://www.lloydsbank.com/help-guidance/thomas-cook-information.asp
MBNA: https://www.mbna.co.uk/support/thomas-cook-information.html
Nationwide https://www.nationwide.co.uk/support/travel/important-travel-information or Telephone 0800 302011
NatWest https://personal.natwest.com/personal/service-status.html
Royal Bank of Scotland https://personal.rbs.co.uk/personal/service-status.html
Santander https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/customer-support/travel-company-ceased-trading
Tesco Bank https://yourcommunity.tescobank.com/t5/News/Thomas-Cook/td-p/28302
Vanquis - https://www.vanquis.co.uk/existing-customers or Telephone 0330 099 3000
Click image for full screen
Consumers should also be vigilant of criminals attempting to use the cessation of trading of Thomas Cook as an opportunity to trick people into revealing personal or financial information.
Criminals will often use the publicity around these sorts of events as a chance to pose as a genuine organisation, including banks, police officers, retailers and travel companies. Often the criminal will pretend to be from the impacted company, such as Thomas Cook, or claim they are dealing with an issue resulting from the collapse.
Fraudulent emails, phone calls or text messages often claim to be able to help customers and assist with refunds.
Using Thomas Cook as a cover story, the criminal will then attempt to get the recipient to disclose personal or financial information, which they will then use for their own fraudulent purposes.
Consumers are urged to follow the advice of the Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign:
Take Five is a national campaign that offers straight-forward and impartial advice to help everyone protect themselves from preventable financial fraud.
22.04.24
24.04.24
19.04.24
By downloading this document, you understand and agree that any sharing, distribution or republishing of the content, without prior written authorisation from the author or content managers at UK Finance, shall be constituted as a breach of the UK Finance website terms of use.