REFUND

No hope for an airline ticket refund – or is there?

american5Question: I’m trying to help my sister get a refund on her daughter’s non-refundable airline ticket. Her daughter went to Spain in January as an exchange student. Her return was scheduled for May 29th.

When my sister, her husband and son went to Spain to visit her, my brother-in-law was rushed to the hospital. He had been hospitalized for over a week until he was stable enough to fly back to Boston. They weren’t sure that he would survive, so my niece went home earlier than expected.

My sister could really use the refund to help pay medical bills.

I looked at American’s web page and it said there are exceptions to the non-refundable ticket. I thought this would apply to my sister’s flight. When I called American Airlines I was told that it would cost $250 to exchange the ticket, but the ticket was only worth $87. The ticket was virtually worthless.
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49 comments

No name change on a dead passenger’s ticket?

Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.com
Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.com
Question: Last year my husband canceled a flight on United Airlines and received a ticket credit. A few months later, he was killed in a hit and run accident.

I have had a difficult time even focusing on things. I sent United an email a few weeks after his death, but months before his ticket credit was to have expired. I received a standard automated response that they would get back to me within 10 days on my refund request.
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26 comments

Whatever happened to mercy?

Duncan Addison/Shutterstock
Duncan Addison/Shutterstock
Mercy.

It’s not a word you hear very often in business. It’s something Tami Alloway desperately needed when she contacted Priceline recently to cancel a nonrefundable reservation at the Hawthorn Suites in Charleston.

Alloway, a nurse from Kansas City, had every intention of honoring the reservation when she made it last summer. But then something happened.

“Totally unexpectedly, my sister’s children were removed from their home and taken into state custody,” she told me. “I was awarded foster care for all three of them and they have been with me since then.”

Her sister’s kids will be with her until the end of the school year. Which brings us to that hotel reservation in South Carolina. In order to find the best price, Alloway clicked on Priceline.com, a site with great rates but super-strict refundability rules.
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122 comments

Where’s my Sears.com refund?

1-Screen Shot 2012-09-28 at 2.30.24 PMQuestion: I ordered three items from Sears.com three weeks ago. Two arrived, but the other — a coat for $75 — was canceled by Sears the same day I placed the order because it was no longer available in a warehouse or store.

It has been 20 days and I’ve received no refund for the canceled item. I’ve done online chat, e-mailed, and contacted Sears on Twitter and Facebook. According to @searscares, I am now on a waitlist for a “case manager” regarding my refund.
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72 comments

These Surfbouncers really know how to sweet-talk a girl

screenOne of the first questions I ask when someone needs help is: Could I see the correspondence between you and the company? When Steven Price showed me his back-and-forth between with a company called Surfbouncer, I was speechless.

And then I asked the company for its side of the story.

Normally, here’s what happens when you have trouble with a business: You send it an email with your problem, and it replies with a pre-fabricated form response that vaguely addresses the issue and offers non-apologies like, “We’re sorry for the way you feel.”

Surbouncer, which offers VPN services for international travelers who need to stay connected, is not one of those companies.
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120 comments

I paid an extra $8,250 to fly home — can you help me get a refund?

jalAnyone who needs a case study about the perils of airline codesharing should look no further than Kun-Yang Lee’s story.

He was flying from Geneva to Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, last month. The ticket, booked through Expedia, was issued through Japan Airlines, had Japan Airlines flight numbers, but one leg of the flight — from Geneva to London — was on codeshare partner British Airways.

But that’s not the problem. At least not entirely.
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107 comments

US Airways tells customer her cancer isn’t terminal enough for a refund

Not the friendly skies. / Photo by wbav - Flickr
Not the friendly skies. / Photo by wbav – Flickr
Ben Coleman and his wife were supposed to fly from New York to Oakland last November on US Airways. The couple had purchased nonrefundable roundtrip tickets on US Airways for just under $1,000.

But in October, Coleman’s wife was diagnosed with cancer.

“Her diagnosis is positive and the doctors tell us — nothing is certain, of course — that it will be a hard year, but expect that she will lead a long healthy life.”

That’s when things got a little complicated.
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211 comments