Europe unExplored – an update

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
          Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
          For promis’d joy!
(To a mouse – Robert Burns)

As the prospect of any European travel recedes ever further into the future, I thought I would take stock on those trips I had originally planned for the first seven months of 2020.

So far this year I have not ventured outside the area bounded by the the M25 (London’s orbital motorway) and don’t expect to be able to until at least the autumn of this year. The map below shows the places that I had been expecting to visit between March and July 2020.

The trips I had planned were:

Europe Explored Trip 1 (22 March – 2 April)
London – (Paris) – Dijon – Basel – Zurich – Innsbruck – Verona – Trieste – Ljubljana – Bled – Regensburg – (Brussels) – London
This was the first trip of my Europe Explored project, linking together a number of places that I had not properly been to before. As previously reported, the trip became impossible only just over a week before departure and for the past two months I have been attempting to recover what I had paid out in hotel bookings and advance train fares.

Southend (10 – 13 April)
This was my annual excursion to play in the Southend Easter Chess Congress, which was called off in mid-March. As I was planning to commute daily to Southend, the only expense that I had incurred was the Congress entry fee, which I was happy to donate to the organisers.

Middlesbrough (6 – 9 May)
I was due to attend a family wedding in Middlesbrough on the VE Day Bank Holiday (8 May). The plan was to drive there and back and do some walking on the North York Moors the day before the wedding. The hotel we had booked in Middlesbrough for three nights refunded promptly when we had to cancel.

Europe Explored Trip 2 (11 – 16 May)
London – Penzance – Exeter – Portsmouth – (Cherbourg) – Bayeux – Rouen – (Paris) – London
This was planned as short six day excursion combining Routes 1 and Route 9 from the Europe by Rail guide that I had been using as my inspiration, with a ferry crossing of the English Channel between Portsmouth and Cherbourg. I was particularly pleased that I had acquired a bargain First Class ticket (possibly due to an error in the booking system) for the long ride from London to Penzance. At the time of booking this trip I was concerned that there could be disruption from French transport strikes, so had ensured that all my hotels had been booked on a refundable basis.

Chess Train (10 – 18 June)
Prague – Bratislava – Budapest – Ostrava – Warsaw – Olomouc – Prague
For the past three years I have competed in the annual Chess Train tournament organised by the Prague Chess Society. Each year this travels over a different route in central and eastern Europe – the tournament is played on the train each day, arriving in a new city to explore by early to mid afternoon.
This year was to have been the 10th running of the Chess Train – to celebrate, an extra day had been added to the tournament and it was moved from its traditional October departure to June. The organisers had attracted the patronage of the Czech Foreign Minister for this year’s event and at his suggestion is was to have visited the capitals of the four Visegrad countries. The Czech Republic was one of the early countries to seal its borders in response to the Covid-19 epidemic and the Chess Train 2020 was cancelled just before it was about to open for booking.

Europe Explored Trip 3 (23 June – 3 July)
Warsaw – Krakow – Przemyśl – Lviv
Trip 3 of Europe Explored was being combined with a family holiday, with three nights in each of the major cities visited. It would cover part of Route 48 from Europe by Rail. This trip was booked in February and the attempt to get refunds is largely yet to come.

Torquay (18 – 25 July)
Every year my chess club has a contingent who play in the British Chess Championships. Our performances are probably not enhanced by the heavy socialising which takes place every evening. This year the Championships were due to be held in Torquay, unusually returning to the same venue for the second successive year (after problems with the original 2020 choice of venue). As there are about 1,000 players in all the events, its normally advisable to book accommodation well in advance, but the 2020 tournament was cancelled just before I was going to book mine.

Attempting to get my money back
I’ve been keeping myself busy trying to recover money from the advance bookings I had made. There have been some some good companies and some bad. Where I have had problems obtaining a refund, reporting the problems publicly on Twitter has often helped to trigger some action, where emails had previously been ignored:
– Europe Explored Trip 1. After considerable effort I’ve now received cash refunds for all bar about £200. Just one of the hotels (an independent hotel in Verona) has failed to provide a refund, and while I’ve only managed to get vouchers for some of the rail journeys, only Trenitalia (for the Verona – Trieste leg) have provided nothing. I’ve put in an insurance claim, but so far the insurance company has been very unhelpful.
– Explored Explored Trip 2. I’ve now received refunds or vouchers from everywhere I had booked in advance.
– Explored Explored Trip 3. I’ve not really started the process of trying to reclaim for this trip as its best to leave it until the last minute in case the company cancels first. As this was also a family holiday for three people, the sums involved are much larger. I suspect that this will result in a bigger insurance claim than for Trip 1. It is insured with a different insurance company, but given the progress of my first claim I do not hold out much hope.

How the different companies have behaved

Hotels

• Independent hotels booked directly. All these, other than the hotel in Verona, have refunded. Some even contacted me before I contacted them.
• Premier Inn. Very good – provided prompt refunds when requested.
• Trip.com. I used them to book a hotel in Bled. Very good – prompt refund.
• Accor (chain covering Ibis and other brands). I hadn’t realised that this company is just an overarching brand, not owning the individual hotels, which are franchises. Consequently, the individual hotel responses varied enormously, and Accor as a brand was rather inept in how they handled this initially. Eventually, I did my get money back from all my Accor bookings for Trips 1 & 2, but whether I will have similar success for Trip 3 remains to be seen.
• getaroom.com. I hadn’t realised I had booked through this company – only when I contacted the hotel directly did it become apparent that getaroom had set up its own website which impersonated that of the hotel. All my emails to getaroom were ignored, only when I started tweeting about my problems did they respond. They also had the cheek to send me a Twitter Direct Message to say that since they would now agree to refund me, I should remove my earlier tweets about my problems before they would start processing my payment!

Transport

• Eurostar. A rather shabby performance by Eurostar. They have made it very difficult to get refunds, trying to imply vouchers are the only option, and when you are persistent taking several weeks to process. Also they will only provide cash refunds if the actual train you were due to travel on was cancelled and also if it had been booked directly with them. For the return legs booked as a through ticket via other operators, only a voucher for the Eurostar portion is available.
• SNCF. Very easy to get a refund for the Dijon – Basel trip. I just clicked on my on-line booking and requested a refund, which appeared in my account within a day. I assumed it would work similarly for the Rouen – London ticket I bought, but when I did so I kept getting an error message. (I’m not sure if this is because it contained a Eurostar booking.) I had an on-line chat which directed me to a refund form, I completed this and got a response that due to the current situation they could only provide a voucher and not process a cash refund (though there was a suggestion that when the current emergency was over, it may be possible to request that the voucher is converted into a cash refund.)
• SBB (Swiss Railways). Although not clear from their website at the time I applied whether they were providing refunds for trains that were still running, they paid up promptly.
• raileurope.co.uk (formerly Loco2). I used this booking site, against my normal instinct to book direct, for the trips to and from Austria. They were very slow to respond, and when chased were unclear about the status of the refund request that they originally said they would submit to OBB (Austrian Railways), suggesting that I apply to OBB myself. A refund was eventually received two months after I first requested it, but missing the raileurope booking fee.
• Trenitalia. Nothing received from them after two months, despite supposedly being eligible and due a response within 30 days, and a chaser being sent.
• Deutsche Bahn. They were used to book a through ticket from Lesce-Bled (Slovenia) to Regensburg. DB made it very easy to apply on-line for a voucher. While, in theory, since the services did not run I should have been entitled to a cash refund, but the only way to get this was to fill in a paper form and post it to them.
• Deutsche Bahn International. They were used to book a through ticket from Regensburg to London. Despite advertising that they would respond to queries within 24 hours, they ignored my two emails to them (a week apart) and an on-line request would only refund the ticket price of the Regensburg – Brussels leg (minus the cost of the seat reservations). Subsequently, I managed to obtain a voucher for the Eurostar part of the trip, but no cash refund as it was not booked with Eurostar.
• GWR. As I had already obtained paper tickets from a machine for my three journeys as part of Europe Explored Trip 2, I had to send pictures of the cut up tickets for a refund. It took them six weeks to process, but I eventually received refunds for these three tickets a few days after I tweeted about my problems.
• Brittany Ferries. When Brittany Ferries cancelled my sailing from Portsmouth to Cherbourg they emailed me a voucher, with a request that I do not contact them. I subsequently noticed that tucked away on their website is an option to request an alternative to a credit note (they can’t quite bring themselves to mention the word ‘refund’). I’ve applied – but nothing has yet been received.

Insurance

• Europe Explored Trip 1. This trip was covered by an annual multi-trip policy with Coverwise. However, the policies they sell are underwritten by AXA and claims have to be made to AXA. While I appreciate they must be busy, both companies have behaved disgracefully. Coverwise never responded to any of the emails I sent them seeking clarification about how to claim. AXA have been very slow, typically only responding when chased publicly on Twitter. Eventually, they emailed me claim forms which were contradictory, asked for totally irrelevant information, and contained a number of typos – along with the threat that the claim would be rejected if they were not completed fully. I sent them these completed forms with a complete dossier of evidence of my attempts to obtain refunds. Over a month later, the only communication I’ve had from them is a generic email saying that as the UK Competition & Markets Authority has said that in theory travel companies should refund customers unable to travel, they would not even look at the claim submitted unless I contacted them again to say why my claim was not of the type which may in theory be refundable. I consider their behaviour to be outrageous and will never again use Coverwise or AXA for any insurance needs.
• Europe Explored Trip 3. As this was going to be a family holiday, a standalone insurance policy was purchased from Insure & Go. Given the disgraceful behaviour from AXA and Coverwise, I can only hope Insure & Go are better, but we shall see.

[Next month I hope to return to reminiscences about a past trip.]