After I sent a couple of emails rejecting the voucher I had an email about 10 days ago promising a refund to my credit card within 5 working days & duly received the £400+ refund earlier this week.
Not to my knowledge? It’s my first time on the site?
Only found it due to the BF discussion…
As you are presumably a person… 
could you please give us your First and Last Name as per our terms and conditions… and I will amend your Registration
cheers
Thanks for that Nigel. I will certainly give it a go.
Current position is that I have been arbitrarily issued with a voucher despite several e-mails back and forth in which I have repeatedly asked (nicely) for a refund.
The contact form on the BF website has an option for “I have been given a voucher but want a cash refund instead”. I also used that. Worth a try?
Robert, I was listening to a radio program on Friday France Info) in which your very question was asked. They had a consumer rights lawyer on who was advising that whilst normally EU regs would apply, the French government had passed emergency measures due to Covid19 allowing French operators to offer vouchers for a rebooking instead of a refund to avoid them going bankrupt.
The same applies to hotels, gites and other booked accommodation that has had to be cancelled due to the current situation.
Thinking about your situation, the approach of BF might well be different depending on where the booker is resident, it wasn’t clear from the program whether that made any difference.
Things keep changing Alex, Air France are now offering both refunds and vouchers. If you accept a voucher they’re giving you an extra 15% as a thank you.
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I think that is commercially quite sensible.
I’ll give it another go Nigel, although I sent them a message 6 weeks ago which didn’t even result in an acknowledgement, let alone a reply.
That’s very interesting Alex.
The thing is that for the past 40 years or so we have all been told that where there is a conflict between EU law and domestic law, then it is the EU law, backed up by the ECJ, that reigns supreme. Once again it seems that it is one set of rules for the UK and another for France. I seem to remember the UK struggling to keep public sector borrowing in check some years back to comply with the EU rule that said it shouldn’t exceed 3% of GDP, only to subsequently hear a French Prime Minister say that France was not going to comply with it because France and Germany made the rules so they could change them whenever they wished !
With a system that apparently allows some countries to do as they wish, whilst others carefully follow the rules, is it any wonder that the UK has left the EU.
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In case anyone is interested I also tried referring my dispute over this matter to the EU Commission’s Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) procedure.
Imagine my surprise when a few days later I received an e-mail from a ‘Do not Reply’ address at the ODR to say that no action would be taken as the complaint had been withdrawn by the Trader against whom it had been made !!
Seems to me to be a totally useless system when the company being complained about can simply withdraw the complaint without there being any reference to the complainant at all.
I wonder which clot in Brussels thought that one up !!
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That has been a convenient cop-out for the UK for years. Anyway the question won’t arise fairly soon and they will all be able to feast on chlorine chicken to their hearts’ content and toe the US line instead.
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Could it be that the company is taking action to resolve your case and therefore further complaint would be pointless?
I do suspect that the UK has often blamed EU for its own errors/issues though as it is so much easier than addressing the problem - this is certainly the case when it comes to immigration (a major problem for many Brexit voters). There is no requirement for UK to have an open border for anyone from EU to arrive in UK and heaven forbid they then be given “benefits”. If you are working in UK that is a different story - and one which nobody resents. It is truly daft however that the main concern of many about immigration concerns those from outside EU which leaving EU will only increase.
Or is it the case that there is more flexibility in the system than UK wishes to acknowledge? “Damned inflexible EU!” allowing countries to do what they want!
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I think the BF decision to offer vouchers instead of cash refunds is understandable but obviously frustrating for people like Robert who can’t see themselves using the voucher anytime soon, what is wrong is that they like many travel companies are allowing passengers to book crossings or flights that due to the current travel restrictions simply cannot go ahead.
Yes a typical sideswipe (inaccurate) against the EU as ever. Firstly all countries have voluntarily agreed to abide by certain standards BUT the EU has no Police Force or Authority to impose any punishments when countries backslide as they often do. The only powers they have is the controls on EU investing in those countries, and as the EU despite UK thoughts to the contrary cannot do anything without the FULL agreement of all Member States. It is in fact a great weakness of the EU where countries like Hungary and Poland can work actively against the EU and its principles they signed up to without punitive action being taken against them. For example any Country can leave the EU, but the EU cannot boot any one of them out.
You and others always forget that the EU was not imposed on any country, and that all members APPLIED to be come Members of their own free will. There is no EU Jackbooted Army ready to march up Whitehall or the Champs Elysee or anywhere else ready to conquer and destroy.
But as we have seen there are those ‘White Ant’ countries (aka termites) only too willing to eat away at the inside to destroy it - with the aforementioned countries and a majority in the UK to the fore.
Undoubtedly true but please don’t forget that at least half of the UK can see the folly in current events and have no desire either to leave the EU, eat chlorine washed chicken or become the 51st state.
Sadly the lunatics are running the asylum at present.
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Yes, it is called sovereignty.
It is interesting to the extent that each country can make its own rules during a pandemic health crisis and goes to show that sovereignty is indeed alive and well within each member state during such crises. As a person in favour of greater EU integration myself, one might decry the lack of a unified and harmonious response to the outbreak, but the fallacy of an alleged “lack of sovereignty” has been clearly shown up in the light of such nation-specific tailored action. The same has been true of state aid rules, which have momentarily been set aside by a number of EU nations to help that state cope on a national level with the economic fallout of the pandemic.
The UK has done exactly the same over the last 40 years, as and when it suited its particular purpose or government of the moment. The perceived “injury” of the UK at the hands of the French and Germans has thus been equally met by the UK’s refusal to be a fully “onboard” member of the band, when any particular decision did not meet its political/diplomatic agenda of the time. You seem to be overflowing with disdain for the so-called hypocrisy of the EU, yet the UK has been as equally, if not more so, hypocritical when it came to being an active member of the EU.
With regard to state aid, there is a thread on Reddit in which an article from the FT has been reposted. Even the UK has taken out state aid measures during the pandemic.
So far, they have all been pretty much approved by the EU Commission. How long that will last remains to be seen.
Direct link to article in FT here:
https://www.ft.com/content/a68bfd0d-47c7-46ec-ac87-20b8b67ddc32?sharetype=blocked
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^^^^^^^ THIS, THIS, THIS ^^^^^^^^ x1000!
Having eaten quite a lot of chicken in the US over the last 15 years or so I feel qualified to say that it’s actually pretty good. I haven’t exactly noticed anyone throwing up outside KFC or dropping dead outside Chick-Filet either. The truth is that there isn’t actually any danger to health from US chicken at all.
I accept that there is the animal husbandry element to consider, but whilst so doing it’s probably good to remember that without intensive factory farming it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to meet consumer demand by the old fashioned methods of outside raising of meat and poultry.
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