It has been 22 days since I booked a suspiciously cheap Air France first class fare. While Air France cancelled the ticket four days after booking, it still has not refunded my money or even reached out to me with alternate options.
A friend of mine reached out to his contact at Air France (without telling me, though I appreciated his gesture) to find out why I was not notified.
He received this response from a fairly senior person on the Totem Pole:
Thanks for sending.All fare filing errors were indeed dealt in accordance with DOT procedures.Cant [sic] see about this specific case as no name/date but if booked through an agency, the message went through the issuing office for passenger notification as most bookings don’t have passenger info.
I get that. Travelocity served as my “travel agent” and I’m sure Air France must have sent some cancellation notice because I can no longer pull up my reservation on the Air France website.
But why is Air France holding onto my money? If they have voided my ticket, why have they still not refunded the ~$700 to my credit card? I’ve already paid the bill…
As I stated, had Air France promptly cancelled my ticket, just like I would have had to do if I made a mistake, I would have let this go. But Air France waited four days to cancel and has held the money for more than three weeks. That is not acceptable.
So a question to the skeptics: shouldn’t Air France…and all airlines…be held accountable for a lack of prompt communication and for holding onto money? Isn’t the only way to put a stop to this sort poor practice to hold airlines accountable when they waffle on a so-called mistake fare?
CONCLUSION
I’m not making any promises here. I actually don’t know how I will proceed…but don’t tell me with a straight face Air France has any right to hold onto my money if they will not honor the fare or even that I have to chase them down for my money.
image: Air France
Who made the charge on your credit card?
Travelocity or AF?
Air France.
Clearly it is Expedia, the parent company of Travelocity, that needs to issue you the refund, unless it was an airline collect booking which I highly doubt.
As the above asked, who took your money? OTAs like Expedia are notorious for taking forever to issue refunds, since they need to make sure they don’t get charged for the ticket from the carrier.
On my credit card, the charge is from Air France, not Expedia or Travelocity…
Just call Travelocity. They will refund you your money.
Too bad you were not one of the lucky ones and flew on the flights, I saw a trip report from one lucky guy.
The charge was still via Travelocity; the refund would come via Travelocity. This is actually industry standard.
Airlines don’t proactively refund cancelled travel agent bookings, even ones the airline has cancelled themselves.
Travelocity really should have contacted you by now, even if only by email asking you to call them. Since they haven’t, you’ll need to call them to get your refund process started, otherwise no-one knows what you want to do with that cancelled booking. It’s all been automation so far…
Give TvlO a call and request your refund.
JAXBA
(Former AA refunds agent, LY ticketing agent, BA ticketing supervisor, current travel agent)
Can’t you just dispute it with your credit card company? They should immediately issue a temporary credit until they investigate this. Seems like the simplest thing to do.
You should really try and get the merchant (in this case Travelocity) to process the refund first. If that takes too long, then dispute away.
You could dispute the charge based on services not rendered and let the CC company do the leg work for you.
Sounds to me like AF is “playing” with you since you wrote articles threatening to go after them.
Doesn’t this act further support your accusation that AF is acting in bad faith?
I really have not threatened Air France (just SWISS/Aeroplan) and don’t flatter myself to think they are actually reading what I write…
Usually you have to go through the Agency to apply for the refund. Call Travelocity and request a refund. It is that simple.
It was the same with the Virgin Australia. According to Virgin Australia, I had to contact Priceline to get my refund for the cancelled ticket. When I contacted Priceline, the money was refunded within 7 days. During that time, I did use the customer service link on the Virgin Australia web page and noted my out of pocket expenses. Those were paid within 7 days also.
You just to contact Travelocity.
I’m in the exact same position, having booked through Travelocity as well. I have not been contacted by Air France at all, even to alert me that my flight had been cancelled. Travelocity only told me that Air France will have to issue the refund and I should take it up with t
Call Travelocity again; they have to do the refund.
If the airlines have the same legal and contractual obligations to the third party travel website as hotels do, you must contact the airline for reimbursement of your payment. The travel website do not collect payment from customers, but they will collect commission from the airlines or hotels for generating business. They do not want to deal with the headache of charge back disputes but are assured of commission payment. I rarely booked through the third party travel website but never had an issue when I did, fortunately. I have read enough troubles from travelers to avoid booking with them .
Incorrect. Airline refunds are through the original issuing agency.
I’m in the same boat. Booked thru Orbitz. Trying to get a refund by going thru AF’s claims form on their website.
Call Orbitz, not AF
Matthew I remain convinced this is a fight worth fighting.
Just imagine your an “average joe” traveler who doesn’t understand the industry. All you know is that Air France had a first class fare sale that you got lucky enough to get in on. Your tickets are bought and paid for. There isn’t any reason to monitor your reservation and you may not do anything further with it until you reach the airport on your day of travel. That will be of course when you find out the airline cancelled your reservation, kept your money, and didn’t even ave the courtesy to make sure you knew there had been an error with your fare.
The DOT started allowing this nonsense because airlines complained that simple errors even when quickly caught were costing them enormous sums. The DOT clearly swung the pendulum too far and it’s going to need cases like this to get them to understand the need to balance protections between the airline and the consumer.
To those who think Matthew should just call AF get his refund and call it a day you miss the point. As things stand now any fare at any time can be declared a “mistake” by the airline for any or no reason. That email you got advertising discounted fares? Guess what, the airline can decide months later when ticket sales make it apparent that they could have sold your seat for a lot more to label it a “mistake” and take your seat away. That wedding that you HAVE to be at you got the cheap tickets for? Now your going to be forced to pay full fare and there will be nothing that you can do about it as things stand.
Fixing this power imbalance would benefit all of us and we should be grateful to Matthew if he devotes his time and resources to it.
Air France in the past took 3-4 weeks for return. It took so long I almost forgot about it(not really).
Air France is pathetic.
It is my strong belief that the true quality and culture in any business is reflected by the actions of the business when things do NOT go right.
Have a friend that literally switched automobile insurance carriers when the insurance company for the other driver was extremely gracious about resolving the matter.
Many airlines seem to not understand that problems can also be opportunities to shine.
I cannot see if anyone has asked, but, can you not use your credit card company as an ally in this matter?
Hi,
If you booked through travelocity, shouldnt they be the ones to refund your money?
I dont know whats wrong with Air France. I just bought a ticket from BOS-CDG and i had a little more than 25K miles. After i bought the ticket i have -24749 miles. No idea what happened. I am just skeptic to transfer my MR/UR to Flying Blue
You have negative miles? Can you post a screenshot?
KLM Platinum Members can go into a negative 10% of their total mile balance to obtain an award, so negative miles on Flying Blue is def possible. I did it multiple times via the platinum service desk of KLM.
Mathew, Didnt know how to post a screenshot here so i tweeted you with the image.
Thanks.
I assume you have also questioned the charge with the CC company. I think that usually gets more attention. I suspect you will get your dollars back, but the presence of the OTA is a complicating factor. I quit using OTAs because if anything goes wrong, they and the airline just point fingers at each other. Again, I’ve eventually gotten things resolved, but only with a lot of time and effort. You can always make a DOT complaint, but I think it only helps get attention unless in replying the airline says something which is clearly not true. If you catch them in a lie, and point it out in a clear, lawyerly email, the airline will at that point recognize they are toast and fold. Note that it needs to be a lie – if an interpretation could possibly support the airline, the DOT will give the benefit of the doubt to the airline.
Apropos of your other issue with Swiss, frankly, it sounds to me like you will only get your miles back. But one time I had an issue and did have to ratchet it up. I filed multiple reasonable, clear complaints, including with BBB and with DOT (and maybe some consumer group, it is a little fuzzy at this point). All I wanted was my miles back. It took forever, and multiple emails. And then I got my miles back – three times. I thought about mentioning it, but given the amount of stress in getting them back, I just kept them and eventually used them. So you never know what will happen when you complain.
I have not. I’d prefer to give them a chance to honor the ticket.
Stumbled upon this while searching for advice. Interesting to know they have a pattern of not communicating and holding funds.
Basically, I requested a refund for booking made directly through AF. It was under the 24 hours refund promise – I followed all their steps to request the refund online and also contacted them via phone to make sure the reservation was cancelled. Also double checked with reps several times to make sure there’s nothing else required.
I understand refunds take time. I don’t have a problem waiting. My issue is that I have no idea if they even received my request. I never got a request received confirmation email. I got a purchase confirmation immediately – TWICE! But they can’t send an automated received confirmation? I took a screenshot of my cancellation confirmation page but it shows no reference number. Of course there is no online tool to check the status. They have no chat function so I messaged them via social media and got no response. Finally 3 days later, I contacted AF via phone to see if they could give me a status update and phone reps basically told me they have no access or control so they couldn’t tell me if they received it. I kept pressing that I would just like reassurance my request was received and she finally gave me an email address. I’ve written and today will be the 3rd day I’m waiting on a reply.
One other point, my sister received her refund confirmation 2 days later stating it was processed. This all happened because we actually ended up deciding on different dates – of course AF tells us they can’t do it without a change fee even under 24 hours so it would be best to purchase them separately and request the refund for the original. Of course, those charges have all posted with no problem.
At this point, I came online to see if others have experienced varying degrees of service and to see if I should just dispute it or to trust their process with absolutely no communication. Frustrating company.
Christina, Can you tell me the end of your story? I went into an Air France office in Paris to cancel the 2nd half of a RT flight (which was refundable) because I wasn’t able to do it online. They gave me a confirmation that it was cancelled and sure enough it quit showing up online. They also submitted the online refund request for me, which I had already done as well. I’m still waiting for the refund and of course there’s no confirmation that they received anything so I’m wondering how long I should wait before I pursue going through my credit card for the credit.
Shanna, did you get your refund and when? I’m in the same situation as you.
Was there any resolution to this? Air France accepted a $1200 payment for 2 tickets in January but we never received s confirmation email. After multiple attempts to contact customer service, they finally told me yesterday the tickets were cancelled due to no receipt of payment. They will not refund the money however because they claim they have no record of the payment, just the hold. This is despite the fact that they requested and I sent them screenshots of the transactions.
I finally got this money back…and let is slide. Wish I had more time, but I was battling SWISS at the time.