Travel companies make the rules, but smart travelers know how to play the game.

When one person found themselves backed into a financial corner over a cancelled vacation, they took the company’s own rules for a spin — and came out ahead!

Read on for the full story.

You’ll lose most of your money if you cancel your holiday with us

I recently had a holiday booked to Mexico, which at the time of booking (early 2020) came to around £2200 for two people for two weeks.

We felt pretty fortunate to have been able to get that at that sort of price.

Unfortunately, life had other plans.

Anyway, COVID happened, and as you can imagine, the holiday we booked with Tui (a British holiday/travel agent) was postponed.

Feeling a little anxious to go abroad even when restrictions were lifted, my partner and I decided we wanted to cancel and rebook at another time.

Truth be told, we also could have benefited quite a lot from getting some of that money back.

But cancelling wasn’t going to be so simple.

I called them to cancel after a rather lengthy hold to get through.

They told me, “Sorry, if you want to cancel, you will lose £2100 of the £2200 that you paid. However, you can make a free-of-charge amendment, and you or we will pay the difference. So if your new holiday is cheaper, we will refund the difference.”

“Okay—let me speak with my partner and see what we want to do.”

Little did the company know, the customer actually had another idea.

Malicious compliance begins.

I had no interest in postponing my holiday, so I browsed their other destinations on the website.

I phoned back the next day:

Here’s how it played out.

Me: Hi, I’d like to make an amendment to my booking, please.

Tui: Sure, no problem. Do you have a destination in mind?

Me: Yes, I’ve found this rather appealing location in the Canary Islands, which also happens to be your cheapest holiday. Oh, and I want to amend it from two weeks to your minimum stay.

Tui: Okay, so you’ll get a refund of £1750, and your holiday has now been amended.

With step one complete, it was time for the home stretch.

After receiving my refund a few days later, I called them and told them I wished to cancel my new, cheap holiday.

At this point, I had lost only about half of what the cheap holiday would’ve cost.

Instead of losing £2100, I only ended up losing £280.

Granted, it’s still not ideal to have lost out on £280, but it sure is better than losing most of what I paid!

It’s nice to see the little guy come out ahead for once!

What did Reddit think?

Many companies force you to jump through several hoops to get your way.

In this world, staying one step ahead is what it takes to not get scammed.

Turns out, there are many loopholes consumers can take advantage of.

The strategy mentioned in this story seems to work for several industries.

Sometimes you just have to beat a company at their own game!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.