Thomas Cook (INDIA) Limited - Cancellation Charges on trip cancelled due to visa refusal

I had booked an international holiday package through Thomas Cook during the month of March-** for my family including me (age ** yrs) , my wife (age ** yrs) and my son (age * years). The trip was to start from *nd of May and was to cover France, Switzerland and Germany over a period of * nights and * days. Package brochure is attached.

The company collected a total sum of Rs *,**,*** (Rs * lacs on *th March, Rs * lac on **th March and Rs *,**,*** on **th April ****). Receipts are attached.

Entire Visa documentation process was handled by Thomas Cook and team. They verified all my docs and proceeded with visa application. I depended totally on TK on this as this was our first international trip.

Our visa interview was scheduled on *th April **** at Vfs office in Bangalore. All the documents necessary for the process after vetting by ThomasCook were shared with us on that day morning. While going through the set of documents, it was clear that Thomas Cook’s team made errors in the application. One error I could notice was that my son’s date of birth was wrongly typed in the application. I am not sure how many more errors were there in the application.

Subsequent to the interview, visa for me and my family was refused. Swiss Embassy issued a letter dated **th April to this effect. This letter was shared with Thomas Cook team directly through visa processing agency VFS and was shared with me only by **th April by Thomas Cook team. Visa refusal letter is attached.

Reasoning offered by Swiss Embassy is stated below;

**. Information submitted regarding the justification for the purpose and conditions of the intended stay was not reliable
**. There are reasonable doubts as to your intention leave the territory of the member states before the expiry of the visa

As can be noted, both the stated above reasons were due to deficiency in the services provided by Thomas Cook as they had verified all the documents before proceeding with the visa application and at no point did they share any concern or doubt over chances of my visa application getting approved.

This was quite shocking for me and family as we were quite excited about this trip. This created a mental agony and are still feeling very sad about this. My family is yet to recover from this.

Thomas Cook is charging me a cancellation charge of Rs ***** per person plus taxes for no fault of mine as entire process of booking flights, hotels and the intenarary was handled by TK itself. Mail from TK is attached.

As a result of this, this has not only created a black mark on my passport, I will have to go through extra scrutiny going forward with all future travel plans.

Along with the financial losses and damages, this has caused emotional trauma to my family, for which Thomas Cook is solely responsible.

I seek full refund of the charges paid, along with compensation of * lacs for the emotional trauma, plus legal charges from Thomas Cook.