The Thomas Cook Affair

[snooky]

How insensitive is this wonderful company?
They received £3.5m from the Greek Hotel chain and kindly donated £1.5 to Unicef.
The parents of the children apparently received around £350k.

Quote from "The Drum"
During the Unicef announcement, Thomas Cook chief executive Peter Fankhauser said: "I believe this is the right thing to do and I apologise to the family for all they have gone through.

"Thomas Cook has not in any way profited from our claim against the hotel owner."

Earlier today (Tuesday 19 May), Andy Barr, head of PR agency 10 Yetis, wrote in The Drum that the incident was “not so much a public relations failure as a 'being a decent human being' failure,” in his analysis of the fiasco.


Lots of tweets from people saying they will never use TC again.

[stoneyburn hibs]

The story was on radio 2 yesterday, disgusting how TC treated the family. One of their management apparently said to the family at the inquest that TC were in no way responsible for the deaths.

[johnbc70]

Shameful, could be their Gerald Ratner moment.

[Mikey09]

Shameful, could be their Gerald Ratner moment.


Disgraceful the way they have handled this tragedy. Seemingly they never apologised to the parents and tried to get the inquest stopped, which to me shows them for what they are. They should have apologised and handed the whole £3million of there "compensation" to those poor people. Reports saying £75million has been wiped off the value of there shares already. Think you're right.... May well be there Ratner moment...

[snooky]

Disgraceful the way they have handled this tragedy. Seemingly they never apologised to the parents and tried to get the inquest stopped, which to me shows them for what they are. They should have apologised and handed the whole £3million of there "compensation" to those poor people. Reports saying £75million has been wiped off the value of there shares already. Think you're right.... May well be there Ratner moment...

Didn't know that.
Maybe I should change the thread title to "The Thomas Crook Affair".
How do these guys sleep at night? They must be a different breed.

[lyonhibs]

What happened here ? Why anyone would use TC anyway is beyond me, so this hopefully nail in their coffin is great news

[Hibbyradge]

Badly advised by their lawyers, most likely.

Or maybe the alternative would have been even worse for the company or individual directors.

Tragic affair.

[Mikey09]

Chief Executive of Thomas Cook has today apologised to the family re the deaths of there children. It's only taken them 9 years and have gone from they "have nothing to apologise for" to now apologising. Now this will have nothing to do with the public backlash and of course the £75 million wiped off the value of there shares recently? Too little way too late. Disgusting.

[RyeSloan]

Chief Executive of Thomas Cook has today apologised to the family re the deaths of there children. It's only taken them 9 years and have gone from they "have nothing to apologise for" to now apologising. Now this will have nothing to do with the public backlash and of course the £75 million wiped off the value of there shares recently? Too little way too late. Disgusting.

Agree...while TC may not have been legally liable a some compassion and understanding would have gone a long way...their stance to date was highly damaging to them when they could easily have apologised and shown some goodwill in what was a terrible tragedy, that would have cost them nothing!

[Beefster]

They'll be in trouble this time next year. Bad things happen but the way that Thomas Cook seem to have handled the entire saga has been shameful.

[snooky]

The Top Man 'apologised' on telly today. Does he not realise that this comes over as shallow and a contrived business-saving gesture?
Following their disastrous PR excercise last week, TC put themselves between a rock & a hard place.
Too little, too late. Damage done but hey, keep listening to your lawyers boys, they know what they are doing. :ostrich: