A one-year wait for an Air One refund

Question: I’ve been having trouble getting a refund from a flight that was canceled. I bought a ticket through CheapOair for a nonstop flight from Chicago to Milan for $670. A few months later, I got an email from them that the flight had been canceled.

They offered a substitute flight that was in no way comparable, so I called them and requested a refund. They said I had to take it up with the airline, which was Air One out of Italy, so I called them and they said no, that I must request the refund through CheapOair.

I then spent about an hour on the phone with CheapOair, explaining my situation over and over again with different agents that I was transferred to. Finally I spoke with someone who confidently said, yes, it would be no problem for me to get a refund, but that it might take up to 12 weeks.

More than three months later, I still hadn’t received my money, so I called the CheapOair agent I had spoken to before and no one seemed to know who she was. I spent another hour being transferred from person to person at CheapOair and the consensus with them was, “What refund? You need to request that through the airline.”

So I spoke with someone at Air One again and they very firmly repeated what they had said before — that they would definitely provide a refund but that the proper channel was through CheapOair. Many phone calls and many hours later I still had gotten nowhere with CheapOair.

It’s now been almost a year since I first asked for a refund. Help! — Dani Lind, Soldiers Grove, Wis.

Answer: CheapOair should have helped you get a quick refund from Air One. As your travel agent, CheapOair should have advocated for you, rather than sending you directly to the airline for help.

One of the reasons you buy airline tickets from a third party like an online or offline travel agency is that they stand behind your purchase, offering to act as intermediaries when you need help. A good travel agent would have helped you fill out a ticket refund request and kept the pressure on Air One to send you the money.

I’ve been mediating these kinds of refund cases for a while, and I’ve noticed that it takes longer and longer to process refunds. It doesn’t help that you were dealing with Air One, which at the time was part of troubled Italian carrier Alitalia.

You shouldn’t have tried to contact CheapOair by phone. A refund request is almost always better handled by email (remember the paper trail!) and it will save you time, too. Here’s how to get in touch with the online agency.

Another option is a credit card dispute. True, you only have 60 days to dispute a credit card charge by law. But many credit cards will go to bat for you even if it’s been longer than that. Simply put, Air One didn’t give you the product that you were sold, so you might have had a strong case for a successful credit card dispute.

The other options — which are long shots — are taking CheapOair and Air One to small claims court. I say “long shots” because technically, neither company is keeping your money. The airline is just taking its time with your refund.

I contacted CheapOair on your behalf. After a considerable amount of back-and-forth between you, the agency and the airline, and another three-month wait, you received a full refund.

  • Liz

    What is it with Italian airlines and crappy service?

  • BucksterSF

    Again, you get what you pay for.

    I bought a ticket through CheapOair for a nonstop flight from Chicago to Milan for $670. = “bend over”.

  • BillC

    In this day and age how do companies justify 12 weeks for a refund?

  • Arizona Road Warrior

    Another example of lousy customer service from an online booking site when a customer needed service.

  • Alan

    No story that begins with a call to a no-name airline can have a happy ending.

  • OTC

    When you book from CheapOAir what do you expect? It’s like staying at the SuperSaver Inn and expecting the Ritz Carlton, you get what you pay for and in this case they paid for a cheap ticket from a 3rd party website on an off branded airline.

    I have no sympathy for people that try to save a a few bucks and get screwed in the process, you take a risk dealing with these type of businesses and sometimes you get burned.

    Bet that ticket on American or United looks a lot better now.

  • David Z

    In this day and age how do companies justify 12 weeks for a refund?

    They probably do it in “batches” and for more manageable record-keeping for financial reporting.

  • Phil

    Cheapoair, the name says it all, what they didn’t tell you is that they are also “cheapo” when it comes to customer service.

  • SirWired

    From my perspective, I’d think it was the airline’s job to issue the refund. I’d like to see the part of the ticket contract where it says that any refund MUST be routed through the purchasing travel agency… The pax’s name is on the ticket and the credit card that paid for it, which was almost certainly billed directly by the airline. Why would the airline require the pax to go through the agency? Why does it matter to the airline at all who does the refund requesting?

    That said, CheapoAir should have gone to bat for the OP.

  • Jeffrey Hess

    Arizona – Not everyone is as well off as you. Some people can’t afford to take trips without using cheap online travel agents. What is the normal price of a ticket from Chi to Milan? I bet it is a lot more then $670 and for a lot of people that savings is the difference between not going on the trip and going.

  • cjr

    “In this day and age how do companies justify 12 weeks for a refund?”

    I was going to say the same. And really, it’s the same thing when when you go to get a mail-in rebate. With the technology available, the time it takes to receive such things should have become much shorter, yet instead it seems to take even longer.

    But with a name like CheapOair…

  • Jay

    Credit card dispute was definetely a fallback option. The 60 day limit isn’t from the date of the charge, it’s from the date of the service associated with the charge, ie the date of the scheduled flight.

  • Arizona Road Warrior

    @ Jeffrey Hess – “Arizona – Not everyone is as well off as you. Some people can’t afford to take trips without using cheap online travel agents. What is the normal price of a ticket from Chi to Milan? I bet it is a lot more then $670 and for a lot of people that savings is the difference between not going on the trip and going.”
    - – - – - – -
    This morning, I did a fare search on Orbitz (then I went to some of the individual airlines to confirm the fares so that you can book directly the airlines) and fares on seven airlines (US-based and European-based; legacy airlines not the discounters, etc.) were $ 695 to $ 719 to travel from ORD to Milan in February (of course, this is the off season).

    Since you can’t check fares 15 months ago (August 2009 or September 2009) when the OP was planning to fly to Milan, I did fare searches for May 2011, June 2011, July 2011, August 2011 and September 2011 (the busiest time, the highest fares); fares on Orbitz and CheapOair were practical the same (some fares were cheaper on Orbitz to $ 50 higher on Orbitz).

    There is a perception that these online booking sites such as CheapOair, hotels.com (read the article from yesterday), Hotwire; Priceline, etc. have the cheapest fares. I have seen minor price differences between the travel provider (i.e. airline, hotel, rental car) website and these sites. To be fair, I have seen some major price differences but do I really want to book a hotel without knowing where it is located, reading the reviews, etc? I have read about people saving $ 100 on airfare using Priceline but instead of having a direct flight, their flights had two connections, early morning departures, etc. They might save $ 100 but their travel time was 6 hours longer (they could spend that time on the beach instead of spending that time at the airports waiting for their connecting flights).

    My father taught me that you get what you pay for. In regards to these online booking sites, I have read too many articles on this website about their poor customer service when there was a problem.

  • Joel Wechsler

    @SirWired is absolutely correct. When I process a refund for a client the money goes from the airline to the client’s credit card. It does not come to me. My only role is to process the necessary paperwork and then follow up with the airline if the refund does not appear promptly, which is what CheapO should have done.

  • BucksterSF

    Exactly how many times in your own life has the adage “You get what you pay for” not actually come true?

  • Eric

    Not to stick up for the OP. I mean it was “Cheap-O-Air” which I think says it all.

    But maybe credit card companies need to adopt special rules for travel, which would apply when flights, cruises, etc., are cancelled months after they’re booked. I’ve seen way to many instances on this site of airlines and other travel companies trying to “run out the clock” on credit card disputes.

    Maybe the rule should be that the clock on credit card disputes doesn’t start at booking, but instead starts on the date of service.

  • Vale

    Chris, Airone and Alitalia are together now, they weren’t when Alitalia was in trouble. One of the solution to Alitalia trouble was to merge the new co with Airone.

  • Josh

    Many/most credit card companies will allow you to dispute a charge in a situation like this if you do so as soon as the issue arises, regardless of the actual purchase date/location etc. I know some people don’t advocate disputing as a first resort, but it really would have been the best protection here. All of the disputes and finger pointing between the agency and the airline about who got the money and who has to refund it get solved when the credit card company pulls it back from whoever took it and lets them figure that out on their own time.

    “12 weeks” may be how the company runs it’s finance department, but that really is their issue, not mine. I can go to Home Depot this morning to return some extra pipe fittings, and the return will show up on my online card activity this afternoon. If you have a clear cut legitimate refund, I think it’s appropriate to give them a short time (2-3 days), then call your credit card company and dispute the charge if it hasn’t already been processed. Most credit card companies will automatically clear the dispute if the airline or agency actively processes the refund while it’s being investigated.

  • Cindy H

    $675 is perfectly reasonable for the time it happened – in the middle of a huge price war. There were tremendous sales to everywhere in Europe in the autumn of 2009. I snatched a fare from San Francisco to Frankfurt for $550 on Delta. And it was a non-stop on the return!
    Cheap-O-Air was the agent, and took the money. It is their responsibility to refund the money to the OP.

  • Aaron

    @OTC
    >When you book from CheapOAir what do you expect?… Bet that ticket on American or United looks a lot better now.

    Come on… really? The guy paid $670, which is a lot of money. His flight got canceled through no fault of his own. There was no comparable flight. I don’t see how the name of his agent or the price of his ticket changes that.

    Let’s say you buy a toaster from Neiman-Marcus for $100, and I buy the exact same toaster from Al’s Discount Toasters for $60. Both toasters break a week after we get them. Am I less entitled to a refund just because I was smart enough to shop around and get the best price? Come on.

    BTW, as an American frequent flier, I know what their refund policies are like and how long it can take. The grass ain’t any greener.

  • Catader

    Make the airlines pay a healthy interest rate on the amount they owe.  As it is they make money holding on to our money.  Take that incentive away and I bet they would be sending those refunds overnight!

  • Catader

    Make the airlines pay a healthy interest rate on the amount they owe.  As it is they make money holding on to our money.  Take that incentive away and I bet they would be sending those refunds overnight!

  • katherine

    hi. i have waited 9 months for a refund from cheapoair and nothing! they even took the money for the cancellation fee too! I am now paying heavy interest charges becuase i cant pay off the creidt amount on my visa care. they are giving me the run-around and i wnat justice. This is insane to wait a 9 month period for a refund. and if i didn’t keep phoning everyday they would have just kept the money. i am never using their site again of course, but i want my money back . this is fraud! please help.

  • http://twitter.com/comanchepilot Joe Farrell

    The ‘online fare websites’ simply take the information from the central clearing house and present the information.  Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline etc etc generally ALL have the same fares – want to prove it?  Go to Kayak.Com = check ‘all’ in the box as to where to go – and you’ll pull up all of the same fares on the same airlines – if for some reason there is a fare that is significantly less than the others- try to buy it – I dare you.  Its a bait and switch. 

  • http://twitter.com/comanchepilot Joe Farrell

    The travel ‘AGENT’ is guess what?  The AGENT of the airline.  They possess the authority to accept funds and forward the funds to the airline.  Thus – they also possess the authority to get the funds back as the AGENT of the carrier – the reason ‘cheapoair’ or substitute any fare website for them – did not do it is because it takes effort and human time [which is money] to keep track of the process.  They don’t want to make the effort or expend the money to do anything other than sell you something . . .