Booking.com tried to charge my daughter £2,000 to cancel a flight

Our reader endured a frustrating experience after attempting to escalate their complaint

Gill Charlton has been fighting for Telegraph readers and solving their travel problems for more than 30 years, winning refunds, righting wrongs and suggesting solutions.
Here is this week’s question:
My wife and I have booked a multi-destination trip around Asia, setting off just before Christmas. We invited our daughter, Laura, and a friend to join us in Sri Lanka, flying out to Colombo together on Turkish Airlines – which offered the cheapest deals and best timings.
We booked through Trailfinders, but Laura found cheaper flights with Booking.com, paying £2,315 for two tickets flying out with Turkish and back with Qatar/BA. 
In early May, both Laura and I received messages from our respective agents saying Turkish had cancelled the Istanbul-to-Colombo flights. The suggested alternative had a 10-hour overnight layover in Istanbul. 
Laura contacted Booking.com via its chat function to ask about alternatives or cancelling. The agent said cancellation was possible but Qatar may charge £200 as the return was unchanged.
In contrast, Trailfinders said my wife and I could switch to Qantas/BA flights with no penalty. On the basis that Laura would get a refund, I booked new flights for her too. But when she told Booking.com she wanted to confirm the cancellation she had earlier discussed, she was told it would cost close to £2,000. 
We have been complaining through the app for five weeks now with no resolution. Can you help?
– Jason Scott 
I suggested to Jason that he should try to escalate the matter by calling Booking.com. This was easier said than done. But after two further hours of online chat (it took five hours altogether), he was put through to the refunds department, after holding for another hour. A refund was eventually agreed, though the agent couldn’t say how much this would be. 
Eventually, in July, the sum of £1,367 for the outbound flight and £717 for the return were processed separately, leaving a shortfall of £231. But it had been a long and tortuous process.
I asked Booking.com why it had been so difficult to achieve a resolution. It said it does not contract directly with the airlines but uses a third-party flight-booking platform, Etraveli, which is almost entirely automated. 
The lesson here is that ticketing for long-haul flights is a complex business, especially when multiple airlines are involved. Each sets its own booking conditions for customers and for the agents it works with. Unfortunately, call-centre staff used by online agents may not have the training to deal with this complexity.
If you do decide to use an online agent – as opposed to booking directly with the airline or a reputable bricks-and-mortar agent such as Trailfinders, where flight-booking agents are rigorously trained – check the individual airline’s booking conditions before pressing “buy”. And always screenshot online chats, as you may need these later as proof of any agreement. 
Gill takes on a different case each week – so please send your problems to her for consideration at [email protected]. Please give your full name and, if your dispute is with a travel company, your address, telephone number and any booking reference. Gill can’t answer every question, but she will help where she can and all emails are acknowledged.