The online travel agent Lastminute.com has been given a week to refund over £1m owed to customers or face legal action.
Ten weeks ago the company committed to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to pay out over £7 million to more than 9,000 customers whose holidays were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The firm agreed to make the refunds by the end of January.
But the CMA says that Lastminute.com still owes over £1m to 2,600 customers.
The company is still sending out the same responses to customers that it issued last summer, reading: “If you are contacting us for more information about your refund’s status, we can confirm that it is currently being processed, and that you will receive an email with the details soon.”
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In addition, Lastminute.com told some package-holiday customers to go directly to their airline to get the cost of their flight back – which the CMA says is against its obligations under the Package Travel Regulations.
Andrea Coscelli, chief executive of the CMA, said: “It is wholly unacceptable that thousands of Lastminute.com customers are still waiting for full refunds for package holidays despite the commitments the company signed with us.
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“We take breaches of commitments extremely seriously. If lastminute.com does not comply with the law and pay people their outstanding refunds quickly, we will take the company to court.”
Lastminute.com, which is based in the Netherlands and Switzerland, has seen its share price has halved in the past year.
The Independent is seeking comment from the company.
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