Not a “voucher/cancellation accepted for future travel” but your $$ back?
When the shit hit the fan, we had 3 trips booked and paid for, airlines, hotels and yes, cruises. 2 music themed cruises and a blues festival.
American Airlines accepted 2 of my cancellations as able to be rebooked thru 12/31/21. Fine. But one of the cruises in now rebooked for 2/22. Customer service says nope, no way, thru 12/31 only. I requested a refund (2 first class tickets, PHX to Fort Lauderdale) and it’s crickets.
Anyone have any luck getting their $$ back, specifically from American?
Not for American airlines but I suspect they are facing the same issue.
My previous employer is an airline that was very reluctant to give refunds because, although they had around a billion dollars in the bank, about half of it was from advance bookings. They were burning through around 100 million per month and refunding everyone would’ve been a disaster financially. So they were reluctant to refund and would suggest various other options instead. However they would always give a refund if asked and after a bit of media coverage a lot of their passengers became aware that, although they were being offered credits, they were actually entitled to refunds.
How much of that is relevant to American? I’m not sure. But I think it’s worth pushing for a refund.
Yes. We had tickets to Malta in April, with hotel reservations for 2 weeks. All our money was returned with no problems. The airline was Lufthansa, don’t remember the hotel chain, but my wife always sticks with the majors (Hilton, Marriott, etc.).
Mizpullin made the reservations, and her policy is to never use third party (Travelocity, Kayak, etc.) and only reserve and pay through the airline or hotel websites. She claims this works better for cancellations and also for flight delays and rescheduling.
I had booked flights to Ireland thru Air Canada, and had a layover in Toronto. I researched it at the time they cancelled the flights, and I think the flight from Toronto to Ireland, since it left from Canada on a Canadian airline, was only subjected to Canadian laws. I might’ve been able to fight to get a refund for the flight to Toronto if I made a big deal about it, but they offered a full, never-expire voucher for everything, which I think is more than they had to do for the Toronto-Ireland part based on Canadian laws, so I took that offer. It was the first time I directly booked with an airline, and I was so happy I did, it was so much easier getting the voucher than it is with those travel websites.
I have not and it’s actually kind of annoying me. Last year I spent the $$$$ for first class tickets to California on United to visit my mom. The trip was supposed to be last March, the pandemic started so I cancelled. UA gave me future rebooking credit instead of a refund, but I have until Jan 4th to use it. At this point, it’s apparent that the pandemic won’t be “solved” by then, and I’m not going to risk being jammed into a sardine can with possibly infectious people, so I want my money back.
I did the online refund request last week which was refused. I’m thinking of calling them to request a refund and see if I can (politely) argue my way. But I suspect I’m SOL a lot of money.
Yes, we had four flights to New Zealand booked for Easter this year and four for Norway in May. Plus all associated cars, hotels, apartments etc. We also had a Germany trip for June and Austria trip for August (both driving trips).
The New Zealand ones were the biggest problem seeing as they were booked through a third party and they were a) very expensive, b) completely unhelpful.
By unhelpful I mean that, as the world shut down and various countries and airlines on our itinerary closed down and cancelled we heard nothing from the third party. I mean nothing. No response to emails, No chance of getting through on the phone…zip…nada. The time of the departure came and went and still nothing. We could get through to the airlines but they just pointed us back to the third party we booked with.
In the end we raised it with the credit card company that we booked with and they were great. They refunded the money to us and pursued it with the third party. That was closed some months ago now so that was all sorted. Whew!
The accommodations we booked through booking.com were all refunded with no problem, the Norwegian flights similar, a straight refund. Same with the Channel Tunnel bookings.
We had loads of stuff booked and we’ve ended up getting all the money back as a refund. Judging by what a lot of people have said I think we’ve been really lucky.
I had a thread about this a while ago, actually. I had tickets to Ecuador for July, and United was playing the game of not canceling the flight even though at the time Ecuador was not allowing foreigners in except for diplomatic personnel. Eventually, it became clear that they had indeed cancelled the flight (I couldn’t find evidence anywhere that the flight existed. I couldn’t book it any more, we looked on flight plan websites, etc. But did United proactively notify me of the cancellation? Of course not.
But once I did call, they refunded the money pretty easily. I think the policy was pretty clear, and I haven’t heard of it changing: if the airline had cancelled the flight and couldn’t reasonably rebook you (they all have specific rules about what that means, but it’s generally in the neighborhood of getting you to the destination within 4 hours of the originally scheduled time), they’d refund cash. In any other case, you’re looking at credit, usually with a caveat like completing travel by 24 months from the original booking date.
If your flights were cancelled or times changed by 4 hours or more, you’re entitled to a refund. They won’t offer it, but they have to honor it if the cancel/change meets above requirements. I’d call and ask if AA flight 175 on 20Jun (for instance) operated as scheduled, if it didn’t, I’d have them look at my reservation. With all of the schedule changes and reroutes that have taken place, there’s a good chance your flights didn’t operate as originally booked. The American agent can request the refund be processed on the spot. The fact that they extended your ‘use by’ date doesn’t have any bearing on this. It will likely take awhile, but if the agent requests the refund, it should, at some point, be processed.
Not American, but Air Canada. I was part of a small informal group about to visit Japan for the last 3 weeks of March and when we decided/were compelled to cancel I immediately went back to the online booking portal to cancel, this was about 15 days before the departure date. I had upgraded to get a seat at the front of a row for the extra leg room for both going and returning, which added about $950 (CDN) to the cost. I got everything but the upgrade cost back.
I was due to travel to Denver for Thanksgiving and cancelled my flight on American Airlines (AA) due to the spike.
AA made cancelling it SUPER easy. Found my reservation online with my ticket code, pressed one button and boom…done.
However, they did NOT refund the ticket. It is merely on account. Luckily there were no cancellation or change fees associated with this so I can use the full amount in the future.
I do not know if they will do a full refund. I suspect you will need to speak to a ticket agent.
Yes, I had a trip booked to Bonaire that was planned for May 2020. I purchased the airline tickets from United Airlines in early January 2020.
By early March 2020, I know it was unlikely we would be making the trip in May. However, I waited to see if the airline would cancel first, which would entitle me to a refund.
In late March 2020, one of the legs of my flight was cancelled by the airline. I immediately called and asked for a refund. It took repeated calls. After the first call, they only agreed to a voucher that would be good for a year, after which I could get a refund. I knew I was entitled to a full refund, but the first employee kept telling me that they “weren’t issuing refunds at this time.” Then there was a lot of publicity that came out in the news with more clearly defined rules, so I called back and finally got a full refund to my credit card.
(Ultimately every leg of my original flight was cancelled by the airline, and Bonaire closed their border to visitors for months.)
On a separate note, I did not get a refund for the deposit on our hotel, but they are telling me they will keep it as a voucher for a least two years, or even longer if necessary.
We had tickets to Australia for last June. Flights were on American, booked through Travelocity. We got a full refund after MANY conversations. The flight had to be canceled by the airlines and then they had to contact Travelocity to void the tickets, at which point Travelocity issued the refund.
I had a couple of kids with flights on Aeroflot which got cancelled by the airline. They seemed to acknowledge that they were required to give a refund but took their sweet time doing it, and finally I disputed the charges with my credit card.
In one case Aeroflot eventually caved and Ok’d the refund. (The weird thing was that they initially claimed I had never requested a refund which was blatantly untrue and pretty easy to document. Don’t know why that happened.)
The other was more complicated because it was the return flight of a round trip and it wasn’t clear how much the refund should be for one leg of the flight. I disputed half the charge, but the airline eventually countered that that leg was the cheaper half. I don’t know if that was true or not but it was all of about $30 so not worth fighting over.
So for that second one: the flight from Destination to home was refunded, but i think i’m not fully following. They had already done the flight from home to the destination? Then had to drive home?
He was studying overseas, and had a round trip ticket to come home between semesters and then back overseas (with a stop in Moscow, hence Aeroflot - a very cheap airline, FWIW). When covid hit, he pushed up his flight and came home, but the return flight overseas was canceled.
He eventually made it back overseas though not with Aeroflot. (Aeroflot tried to get me to accept a voucher for a future flight, but I didn’t know what the situation would be when he could finally return if ever, so I declined that.)