The Supreme Court explained how to return money for a postponed trip

The Supreme Court explained how to return money for a postponed trip

Here is the main idea voiced by the Supreme Court: if you bought a travel package, but were unable to go at the appointed time, this does not mean that your money was wasted. When the amount spent on vacation can be returned back, the panel for civil disputes of the Supreme Court has decided.

And now - the details of this dispute. At the end of May, one citizen bought herself a ticket to the warm sea through a travel agent - a certain LLC. The operator was another LLC, owned by a large and well-known travel company. Our heroine entered into an agreement with a travel agency and deposited all the money. That is, I paid 53,800 rubles for the trip. But it so happened that a week before the planned vacation, the woman became ill at work and was admitted to the hospital.

The citizen realized that she would have to cancel the trip on the booked dates, and asked the travel agent to reschedule the trip dates with an additional payment of 20,000 rubles. But the company did not agree to this. The travel agent sent the citizen a letter of refusal. This letter said that for postponing the tour she had to pay not 20,000, but 45,000 rubles. He also added that it is impossible to minimize the costs of a tour operator without an application to cancel the tour.

Then the woman sent a claim to the travel agent demanding to terminate the contract and return the money. But the agent refused this too. The company reported that its actual expenses incurred to the tour operator amounted to 51,078 rubles. And this means that this amount will not be returned to the client. Only a refund of the agency fee is possible - 2722 rubles.

That’s when our heroine not only got offended, but filed a lawsuit against the tour operator. The plaintiff in her statement demanded to return the money spent, as well as to pay her compensation and a fine for her unwillingness to voluntarily meet her halfway. But by this time the travel agent company had been liquidated, so the court terminated the proceedings against it. The court considered the arguments of a well-known travel agency more weighty, whose representative assured that his client had not violated the plaintiff’s rights to book a “tourist product” or cancel it, and fulfilled all obligations.

The Supreme Court emphasized that the main responsibility to the tourist lies with the tour operator

And the representative of the defendant stated that the operator did not receive any applications for cancellation of the tour, and the plaintiff sent an application for termination of the contract already during the tour. All these arguments of the defendant were indicated in the court's refusal decision.

The losing citizen challenged the refusal. And she was right - the appeal supported her. They assumed that her trip did not take place due to circumstances beyond her control - due to emergency hospitalization. The fact is confirmed by documents, and the representative of the LLC did not dispute this in court. The court ordered the operator to pay the woman the amount she demanded. And the offended travel company appealed the refusal to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. But the Judicial Collegium for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court considered the conclusion of its colleagues in the appeal to be correct.

Here are the main thoughts expressed by the Supreme Court on this dispute. He stated that the relationship between the parties to the dispute is regulated by the consumer protection law. The Supreme Court also emphasized that the tour operator really bears the main responsibility to the tourist.

The Supreme Court recalled the laws - according to Article 782 of the Civil Code and Article 32 of the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights, a tourist has the right to refuse to fulfill the travel contract at any time, subject to payment to the tour operator for the actual expenses incurred by him related to the fulfillment of obligations under this contract. The seller must prove the costs. In this case, each of the parties may demand to terminate the contract if there is a significant change in circumstances (Parts 5-6 of Article 10 N 132-FZ). “Significant changes in circumstances” include, among other things, the inability to travel due to circumstances beyond a person’s control—the tourist’s illness, refusal to issue a visa, and other circumstances. The citizen reported the existence of such circumstances and confirmed them with documents. In addition, her contract did not specify a specific tour operator - although in fact the money was received by a well-known travel agency, the Supreme Court said. And he added that the tourist was not informed about this.

Under such circumstances, the operator cannot be held responsible - the agent is to blame for the situation, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation said. The court decided to leave the ruling of the appeal unchanged, satisfying the applicant's requirements.

Who is affected by the new order?

Read on RBC Pro

What tax innovations have the authorities prepared for src=»https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/media/img/5/36/756337447457365.jpg» class=»aligncenter» width=»1536″ height=»960″[/ img]Swimming shallow: how does the thinking of a leader differ from the thinking of a performer

The Russian insurer is going for an IPO with a valuation of up to $1 billion. What is important to know

“Commodity prices could collapse”: Cathie Wood on risks in stock markets

Special conditions will apply to those tourists who purchased a tour up to March 31, 2021 inclusive, the bill says. From its text it follows that we are talking about trips in all directions, both within Russia and abroad. Due to forced downtime since March, travel agencies have accumulated obligations for more than 600 thousand postponed tours, the Association of Russian Tour Operators (ATOR) estimated. Taking into account canceled tours for June-July, the number of such obligations will exceed 800 thousand.

The amount of prepayments that Russians made only for foreign tours is about 50 billion rubles. until the end of 2021, says RBC’s interlocutor close to Rostourism.

Clients who booked tours after March 31 and made an advance payment will most likely be able to get their money back, believes Ilya Umansky, head of the ATOR Domestic Tourism Committee. But the number of clients who booked tours already at a time when the borders were closed and the possibilities of travel even within Russia were not clear was minimal, so we are talking about insignificant amounts, notes Umansky.

Airlines were offered to pay ₽365 for uncarried passengers Business

What can tourists ultimately get?

The essence of the special conditions for resolving the issue of sold but not completed tours is not explained in any way in the adopted bill. The by-laws will spell out the rules for concluding additional agreements to existing contracts for the provision of tourism services, a representative of Rostourism said.

The tourist will receive a guarantee from the tour operator, which he can use to receive services within a period that will be agreed upon separately, and if he does not use this service during this period, he will be able to return the money, Umansky suggests. According to his estimates, Russian tour operators will need at least one year to fulfill deferred obligations. More comfortable, according to the expert, would be a period of one and a half years - such a time period is now being introduced in a number of European countries.

Train tickets

According to the press service of Federal Passenger Company JSC, trains from Russia to China, North Korea, Italy, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Austria, France, the Czech Republic, Poland and others were temporarily canceled.

“Unused tickets for canceled trains can be returned without additional payments or fees. For a refund, passengers need to contact any railway ticket office in the territory of the state where the ticket was purchased,” said the press service of JSC FPC.

As originally planned

The original version of the bill stated that the government in some cases, for example, when a state of high alert is introduced in the country or when a foreign state restricts the entry of tourists, can suspend the tour operator’s obligations enshrined in the law to return the client’s money for the tour.
Instead, the tourist should have received a guarantee from the company that he would be provided with an equivalent tour. This means that the program, route, travel and accommodation conditions, such as location or hotel category, will be equivalent to those that were specified in the contract when purchasing the tour.

If the price of an equivalent tour at the time the service is provided is higher than that specified in the contract, the tour operator has no right to demand an additional payment from the tourist. If the tourist does not take advantage of such an equivalent tour within the agreed time frame, the travel agency must return the money within ten working days, as stated in the first version of the bill.

Refund of funds from the tour operator's personal liability fund

The Government of the Russian Federation has decided to return to tourists (other customers) the amounts of money they paid under contracts for the sale of a tourist product in the field of outbound tourism, concluded up to 03/31/2020 inclusive, from the tour operator’s personal liability fund (Part 1, Article 11.8 of Law No. 132-FZ ; clause 1 of the Order of the Government of the Russian Federation dated April 15, 2021 N 977-r).

Within a month after 04/15/2021, the tour operator had to send to the association of tour operators in the field of outbound tourism a notification about the return to tourists (other customers) of the amounts of money they paid for the tourist product from the funds of the fund (clause 2 of the Rules, approved by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated 08.04. 2020 N 461).

In turn, the tourist can contact the tour operator with a request for a refund and the necessary documents within six months from the date the tour operator sent this notification. The return of money paid for a tourist product from the tour operator’s fund is carried out by the association of tour operators in the field of outbound tourism (clauses 3 - 5 of Rules No. 461).

Flights

“All Russian airlines have confirmed to the Federal Air Transport Agency that they will return money for both refundable and non-refundable tickets for canceled flights,” says General Director of the Association of Air Transport Agencies Sergei Demidenko . – To do this, you must submit a written claim to the carrier company. If you bought your tickets from an agency, you need to contact them there. The intermediary can retain a small part of the funds for his own, explained Vladimir Kravchenko.

But most carriers behave with dignity in this situation. “Italian aviation, for example, demanded that all carriers that had permission to fly to their country refund money to passengers of canceled flights - otherwise, the authorities threatened, permission to fly to the country would be revoked in the future,” added Nadezhda Efremova.

"Souvenir" from the resort. How to protect yourself from coronavirus on vacation Read more

WHAT IS THE DATE FOR POSTPONEMENT OF TOURS THAT CAN NOT TAKE PLACE DUE TO THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC IN 2021?

This issue is currently regulated by the “Regulations on the procedure for rescheduling and refunding the cost of tours that did not take place due to coronavirus,” which was approved by Government Resolution No. 1073 and published on July 24, 2021.

According to this document, the deadline for rescheduling tours that did not take place due to the pandemic or refunding money for such tours (vouchers) is until the end of 2021 . Read more about the conditions for rescheduling tours, providing refunds and exceptions in this material from the ATOR Bulletin.

Note that there is currently a problem of imbalance between two government regulations: many “Covid” tours included regular transportation, for which airlines, in accordance with Resolution 991, have the right not to return money until 2023.

Accordingly, tour operators today are faced with the impossibility of providing (according to Resolution No. 1073) an equivalent tourism product to such tourists.

Editorial Board of "Bulletin ATOR"

Cover photo courtesy of Depositphotos.com

ATTENTION:

Even more materials from ATOR are in our channel on Yandex.Zen.
You can read the news by subscribing to the Instagram account of the Association of Tour Operators, to the ATOR channel on Telegram, or to updates on our Facebook page and the ATOR VKontakte community.

You will find free online courses, webinars and electronic catalogs of tour operators at the ATOR Academy.

New: subscribe to the official ATOR channel on YouTube and join the official ATOR group on Odnoklassniki.
come back

WHERE DID THE INCORRECT INFORMATION ABOUT “A CANCELED TOUR CAN BE RESCHEDULED UNTIL 2023” COME FROM?

All links in publications about the “three-year period” of transferring “tours” in some publications lead to an interview with the executive director of the ATOR radio station “Moscow Speaking”, which, obviously, the journalists of these publications listen to or read (there is also text material on the website of the radio station itself - here it is ) didn’t bother themselves.

In this interview, the executive director of ATOR, answering a question from the presenter from listeners about “stuck air tickets to Cyprus,” briefly spoke about the procedure for returning or transferring air tickets .

There was no talk of any “tours” or “vouchers” ; the conversation concerned the rules for rescheduling departures or refunds for air tickets .