“Should I just take the money and run?”

virginatlanticMegan Boing booked two tickets from Chicago to London on Virgin Atlantic Airways for her honeymoon. Then the airline canceled her flights.

Normally, it would offer her two options: either a full refund or a new flight of its choosing.

But that’s not what happened.

I called the US customer service line on July 7th and they were unable to book me on a flight on any of the neighboring days. The phone representative told me to call back the following day to see if anything opened up.

The next day, I called them again on July 8th and was again informed there were no flights available. At this time, I requested a full refund of my tickets since (as I explained to the rep) I did not have flexible travel dates. After being put on hold for a time, the rep returned and said that since the ticket was non-refundable, I would only be able to get taxes and fees returned to me.

Virgin’s own conditions of carriage — the legal agreement between Boing and the airline — say otherwise:

Fare refunds will be [issued] … if we cancel a flight, fail to operate a flight reasonably according to schedule, fail to stop at your destination or Stopover, or cause you to miss a connecting flight because of in-flight delay [or] diversion …

Boing asked Virgin for a full refund. To which it replied:

With reference to your Refund Claim 85975 , the fare purchased carries a USD200 cancellation penalty. The ticket is still valid for travel to be completed by 24Mar2010.Please advise if you desire the partial refund or choose to use your ticket toward future travel.

Kind Regards
US Refunds Dept
SHS

This is a clear case of an airline not following its own rules, let alone EU rules governing airfare refunds. Virgin canceled Boing’s honeymoon flight, and couldn’t reschedule her on a flight the day before or after her scheduled vacation. And it wants to charge her $200 to reuse the ticket?

Please.

Boing asked me what to do. “Am I in the right to fight for a full refund, as the carrier canceled the flight?” she wondered. “Or, at this point, should I just take the money and run?”

I contacted Virgin on her behalf. A representative responded promptly:

Megan is correct … she is entitled to a full refund. Our Customer Service team will be contacting her directly.

Her refund appeared in her account late yesterday.

Lesson learned? When an airline says “no,” check its contract. It might not be following its own rules.

Obviously, Virgin should have offered Boing an immediate refund when it canceled her flights. And it shouldn’t have taken my intervention to get it to do the right thing.

(Photo: Dr. Jaus/Flickr)

  • Bysshe

    I was wondering if you could post some advice on how to accomplish these discussion with an airline without involving a well connected member of the press? It seems as a mere layman it would be hard to convince the airline otherwise and as Ms. Boing was considering, just take the little money left and accept the inequity.

  • Carver

    @Bysshe

    Step 1: Call
    Step 2: If you don’t like the answer, hang up;
    Step 3: Go to Step 1 until you get the desired answer

  • Glenn

    I recently had to go a couple of rounds with British Airways when they wouldn’t honor their Conditions of Carriage, to give me flight credit after I was unable to fly for “reasons beyond my control”.. After some unfruitful phone calls to agents who wouldn’t even look up the CoC, and after using the online form to no avail, I asked for Chris’ help. He suggested that I next write a letter on my own … which I did … to the CEO. Not only did I get a full refund on the tickets (and the cost of postage & phone calls to the U.K), they also sent me a $50 voucher (not that I’ll ever get a chance to use it before it expires ).

  • Geoff

    Elliott is savy to airline rules. Any decent ASTA travel agent would be as savy. In this time of troubled everything, ask your friends that use agents for referrals. We good old (20 years or older) family based agents know what we are doing and know how to keep the prices down.

  • David Z

    Step 1.1 Ask for a supervisor if need be. :)

  • LeeAnne

    @Carver: If you read Chris’s blog as much as I do, you would know that he never recommends trying to deal with these types of issues over the phone. He always advises that you put everything into a letter, which you should send to key individuals at the various companies.

    This advice of his is difficult to follow – I know that I always want to TALK to somebody, in real time, so I can explain the ins-and-outs and various complications of my situation. And letters don’t give you instant gratification. When I’ve been treated unfairly, especially when there’s money involved, I want resolution NOW! I want someone to listen to me, make note of the unfairness, agree with me and refund my money NOW.

    But I’ve since learned that Chris really is right. The people you get on the phone are oftentimes low-level cogs in the wheel, who don’t really care about your unique situation, and just want to follow whatever rule they think they are supposed to follow, regardless of how unfair it is. They often don’t even have accessibility to someone “higher up” who can provide you with satisfaction. They are just low-level employees sitting in a call center.

    Whereas with a letter, you can lay all the details out on paper, clearly, in such a manner that the realities of the situation are evident. You can be sure it gets seen by someone who actually has authorization to make things happen. And you have proven to the company that you can WRITE – therefore you can COMPLAIN – in writing, publicly, if they don’t do the right thing. Provided you have a valid complaint, this will get the right action far quicker than some lowly call-center staffer on the phone.

  • Kelly

    So why did this poor woman have to go through all this? Why was customer service so dense about their own C of C? This type of thing makes me so angry…..

  • Bill

    They should have paid for her ticket on another airline if they were not flying her. Kind of difficult to change a wedding/honeymoon.

  • Mr. B

    @Carver
    @David Z
    (@Bysshe)

    Step 3 is write a letter or an email, which create a clear record of your interactions with the offending provider.

    Like Chris usually says: You may get a “promise” during a phone call, but when that promise fails to materialize, there’s no record of it being made.

  • Joe Farrell

    Virgin, after discovering their error [meaning they had their nose rubbed in it by Chris] SHOULD have put them in Business Class for their honeymoon on the flights leaving the date they wanted to leave or accommodated them on a flight the day before or after. TRUE customer service, after being discovered violating the terms of contract SHOULD have bent over backwards to accommodate the customer for a once on a lifetime [ok, maybe twice given divorce rates] trip. What buttheads.

  • Carver

    @ Mr. B and Leanne

    I don’t disagree that when you are making a formal complaint, a letter is more effective than a phone call. But not everything requires a formal complaint. In this case, I suspect that this matter was more the problem of a clueless agent than a systemic problem with Virgin. The quickest and easiest way to resolve such a problem is to simply thank the person, accept that your drew the short straw and call back and hopefully get a more clued in agent.

    Then, the clued in agent should be able to give you a tracking number and an e-mail confirmation.

  • Bela Fleck

    Not dense about their own rules, I suspect. Simply doing what they can to hold on to customer’s money – assuming customers don’t know the rules and a simple “no” is all it takes to get rid of them.

  • Liz

    As a person who hates phones, I was more than happy to deal with Northwest via email last year. It took awhile (the refund came in pieces) but I got everything back after about 2-3 months. My contact person was sympathetic and as helpful as possible, and since I could just dash off an email and not waste my time on hold, my blood pressure stayed low. Letters may be more effective if you run into a stubborn company (NWA gave in to me immediately…they were just inept about following through), but email is a great compromise between the paper trail and the near-instant gratification.

  • http://www.clarkecomputer.com Charles Clarke

    If there is a $200 cancellation fee for the passenger, there should be a $200 cancellation fee for the airline.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jennifer.finger.37 Jennifer Finger

    Unfortunately, customer service agents are usually low-ranking on the corporate totem pole.  They don’t work in the legal department and what they are authorized to offer customers with problems is often quite limited.  They’re not allowed to go outside those limits. 

    And a lot of times business training amounts to “need to know” information.  Sadly, airlines don’t seem to consider the contract of carriage something their customer service agents need to know-because of those limits-and the agents often don’t have the education, travel background, or business/legal savvy to realize that this is information that their jobs could depend on.  So this kind of thing is the result.