To make this question as short as possible I’ll omit all the steps I recently went through and leave it simple.
I bought tickets through an internet site for an upcoming trip.
I realized I need to change the departure day.
After jumping through an insane amount of hoops I finally get to the point where they’re willing to talk to me about changing my ticket.
I am informed by the representative it’s ‘easier’ to cancel my ticket and rebook
I ask that rep to double check that there is no fee.
She informs me there is only a $30 fee.
I ask again if she’s sure
I’m assured this is correct.
I cancel the ticket.
Five days later I get an email stating they ‘urgently’ need to speak to me about the refund.
I call them and I am informed that the agent was ‘mistaken’ and that there is really a 50% cancel fee on those tickets. Meaning I’ll lose around $600
I have now been on hold for a supervisor for about 1 hour.
What are my options? Should I call the credit card company and dispute the original charge or is that a waste of time? I don’t want to stray too far into the asking for legal advice territory but I’d like to know what would be the ways I can respond to this? Or do I just have to take it?
Something like this happened to me too. It wasn’t a plane ticket, but the circumstances were similar. I was told something, followed directions, then got charged anyway. I disputed it on my credit card and got a chargeback credited to me. Keep a detailed account, including any documentation like emails, names of people you spoke to, etc. That’s part of the credit card dispute process. One thing to consider is that even if you win and get money back via your credit card, it doesn’t mean that the dispute is over with the firm that bought your tickets. They may still come after you for the money and it may end up with a collection agency. There may even be something that shows up in your credit reports (just let them know the facts and it’ll be cleared). The key is to get back your money.
Annoyingly I can’t look at the terms and conditions of my tickets anymore now that they’ve been moved to the cancelled slot. The generic terms boil down to “The cancel fee you pay will vary depending on the circumstance and you’ll always be charged the maximum possible” I remember when I first started trying to cancel that my tickets said something along the lines of “If you try to change or cancel the tickets there may be a charge of up to $200 per airline but the fee is typically $150” but it’d never say straight out what the charge would be and it wouldn’t let me change them online it’d just tell me I had to call customer support and find out from them the real costs and have them change/cancel it.