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Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

theguardian.com

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Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#171

Post by toyg »

gertrunde wrote: post #112
tialaramex wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Guardian article mentions that hotels have to wait up to 3 months to be paid by the holiday company. Ninety day terms are very common in most B2B industries. Large companies quickly learn that their suppliers are dependant on them to stay in business and can be abused almost at will. So nominally "90 day" terms claiming you have 90 days to pay become "We definitely won't pay until 90 days after you bill us" and…

I suspect that this might be a varies-by-country thing, certainly in the UK 30 days is the norm, 90 days would be a bit odd. But I think Italy are mostly 90 days (apparently due to that being Fiat's terms, and everyone else followed suit).

No, it depends on the sector. Big supermarkets, for example, pay later, as do a lot of businesses where actual turnaround of goods is involved; but service companies typically have a more flexible cashflow and can easily do 30 days.

In Italy the situation was so bad that it was not uncommon to get 180 days from big accounts. The State set an awful example by allowing 12 months on its own bills, and often wouldn't pay for years if at all (what are you going to do, sue them? The average lawsuit takes more than 2 years...). In the last decade, several acts of Parliament were passed to actually force national and local administrations to settle their bills - and a lot of them were still outstanding a year after that. About two years ago, the government passed a law forcing all businesses and administrations to pay in 30 days by default (with some exceptions, of course). Whether this is actually being enforced, I don't know (I don't live there) but in theory it should allow smaller businesses to be a bit more confident when signing contracts and asking to get paid.

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#172

Post by meigwilym »

LunaSea wrote: post #156
tialaramex wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Guardian article mentions that hotels have to wait up to 3 months to be paid by the holiday company. Ninety day terms are very common in most B2B industries. Large companies quickly learn that their suppliers are dependant on them to stay in business and can be abused almost at will. So nominally "90 day" terms claiming you have 90 days to pay become "We definitely won't pay until 90 days after you bill us" and…

> The EU says if in practice you don't pay on or before 90 days you owe interest at a calculated rate on the due amount. Interesting. Do you have a source for this?

Here's a page from the UK government

https://www.gov.uk/late-commercial-payments-interest-debt-re...

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#173

Post by johnnycab »

tialaramex wrote: post #103
arthurfm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Guardian article mentions that hotels have to wait up to 3 months to be paid by the holiday company. I can see why the Tunisian hotel did what they did, but you are correct that their business relationship is with Thomas Cook, not the holidaymakers. Meanwhile, Thomas Cook holidaymakers were anxious that they might be evicted from their hotels or charged again for their holidays. Holiday companies do not normally…

> The Guardian article mentions that hotels have to wait up to 3 months to be paid by the holiday company. Ninety day terms are very common in most B2B industries. Large companies quickly learn that their suppliers are dependant on them to stay in business and can be abused almost at will. So nominally "90 day" terms claiming you have 90 days to pay become "We definitely won't pay until 90 days after you bill us" and…

>But most small suppliers are so in thrall to the huge company they supply that they won't even ask for that money.

You are contradicting yourself by stating that it is understood that suppliers will get squeezed on payment terms and/or risk getting terminated if they don't stay in their lane; then you state that they should issue demands on late payments. In reality, SME's are not in thrall of mega-corps, they are just doing whatever it requires to maintain the status quo and keep the symbiotic relationship alive, even if it means giving up some rights and being on unequal terms; it is crazy, but that is how it is.

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#174

Post by TeMPOraL »

Scarblac wrote: post #62
dehrmann wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gift card market just confuses me. Especially when it's people giving gifts to people (not corporate gifts), cash is something that has at least as much value as the gift card, is accept everywhere, isn't a liability on a balance sheet, and is easier to give.

Ideally a gift should show that you know the other person well enough to pick just the right thing for them. Money is the other extreme, it says "I really have no idea what kind of gift you'd like", so apparently you hardly know each other. Gift cards are at least a small step up, you show you think the other likes to travel.

I wonder whether this sentiment evolved naturally, or was created by merchants (the way we have an ever growing amount of holidays and customs that somehow oblige you to spend lots of money).

On the one hand, giving a well-received physical gift shows that you know the person enough to get them something they wanted. On the other hand, it also risks they'll have an unplanned item that kind-of-but-not-quite matches what they actually wanted, creating friction and inconvenience in their lives. I know this is a custom, but personally, I'd much prefer to get a monetary equivalent instead.

(One custom in my area I know where giving actual money is still expected is weddings. This is usually justified by the fact that organizing a wedding costs a ton of money, so this helps the newlyweds recoup the expense.)

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#175

Post by C1sc0cat »

pyvpx wrote: post #159
C1sc0cat wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one who specialises in enterprise SEO. That is still an issue with many businesses, websites are still seen as just an electronic version of a poster on a bill board, its gradually changing. And Eu companies are even worse, a few years back I suggested a link from a German parents website to the uk subsidiary and was told the Head office lawyers where checking to see if they "where allowed" to add a link.

that's a german legal liability thing. not (just) european business generally being stuck in the 90s

What linking to your uk subsidiary?

Was that the 1890's they are stuck in :-)

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#176

Post by dagw »

greglindahl wrote: post #25

One interesting part of the news coverage is that there are 600k customers involved, and only 150k of them are UK holidaymakers. Notice the lack of coverage of the other 450k?

Notice the lack of coverage of the other 450k?

if you read a Swedish newspapers they'll talk about the Swedish customers, read a German newspaper and they'll talk about the German customers and so on.

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#177

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

rythie wrote: post #127
mhandley wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't hotels realise this is a reputation business? In the age of the Internet, no-one with access to TripAdvisor or Google will ever stay there again. Wouldn't be at all surprised to see the hotel change name in the next year, if they survive. But perhaps worse that that, a hotel behaving like this, and not being slapped down hard by the Tunisian authorities, will damage the entire Tunisian tourism industry, just as…

Not just bad reputation, it's against the law in many countries. It's given as example of the False imprisonment wikipedia page [1]: "The detention of a customer by a business owner (e.g., hotel operator, apartment owner, credit card company) for the failure to pay a bill." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_imprisonment

I'd be interested to know if this is illegal in (specifically) Tunisia.

The closest parallels I can think of are the "mechanic's lien"[0] from English Common Law, or "debtors' prison"[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanic%27s_lien#Creation_and...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#178

Post by dsfyu404ed »

roddux wrote: post #140
sprafa wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most British companies I’ve seen operating appear to be an absolute mess from the inside. It’s funny that the British have the Northern European credibility in business but I don’t think they’re anywhere close as efficient or organised as the Germans or the Dutch. This is just personal experience but I’ve come to realise it seems to be the norm that British management is overall terrible.

> it seems to be the norm that British management is overall terrible What an incredibly spurious, over-generalised anecdote.

The history of Ireland makes me think it's not as anecdotal as some would like. ;)

Edit: I really hope that the people down-voting this just don't like the joke. If they think British rule of Ireland was good for Ireland or was in any way high quality that is far more concerning.

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#179

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #69
physicsguy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a subsidy; the companies which sell package holidays need to put the cash up. It was done because of financially unstable package holiday companies setting up and then failing leaving people stranded. Most people in the UK know to buy an ‘ATOL Protected’ holiday if they go for a package deal.

It ends up being a subsidy when the largest provider collapses and the funds don't cover the problem. Who pays then? Oh, the government.

[deleted]

Re: Thomas Cook collapses, stranding 150k UK holidaymakers

#180

Post by C1sc0cat »

markh wrote: post #135
rwmj wrote: post #75

I guess as they've gone bust I can tell this story now ... I used to consult for Thomas Cook about 15 years ago, and they were a basketcase of a company even back them, so this doesn't surprise me. I feel sorry for all the reps and workers out in the field and on the planes who will lose their jobs because of the profligacy of the Peterborough head office. Two examples of stupidity stick with me. One was that at the…

This brings back memories... I was the technical half of a two person team who built the very first Thomas Cook website in 1995. Of course, e-commerce was a step too far at the time, but there was much excitement when the spec for HTML frames came out mid-project (don’t judge).

Ha I can recall in early 95 excitedly explaining to our customer in BT that we had Tables for layout and could change the background colour now

This was an intranet site was launched in 94, we don't talk about bt.com

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