Did you ever recoup your monies from Lufthansa? I booked two tickets and my mother has to have necessary surgery at the time we are supposed to fly. We cancelled the flights but they only refunded taxes and fees. We are trying to get the rest of the money refunded but it is not looking very good. I don’t even see how this is possible? It is is stealing in my opinion and very unethical. We also cancelled over a month in advance?

Please let me know any of your advice as how to proceed.

The number of carriers has nothing to do with it. Only one airline got the money for the ticket. That’s the “validating carrier”, usually the first international carrier. None of the other airlines gets a penny until the passenger actually travels.

1) The actual requirement doesn’t use that word — it says “When a refund is due…”. Pretty clearly, when the airline changes the schedule in a way that’s unacceptable to the customer, a refund is due; Orbitz and the airline confirmed that by promising a refund. So the 7-day requirement applies; the “contact your credit card company” part is just a suggestion of how to enforce it, not a limit on your rights to only that case.

2) I’d argue that while the original ticket wasn’t a “refundable” ticket, once a refund is due because of the airline breaking their side of the agreement, it is certainly “refundable” — just using basic English, if something is able to be refunded, it is refundable.

I agree with others that it’s best to get confirmation of the pending refund, then contact your card company and dispute the charge. There’s absolutely no reason a credit card refund can’t be processed immediately; I just returned some products to a big box store, and the next day saw the credit online. Let Orbitz and the airline be responsible for their systems…

Buy a laptop at Best Buy, and it’s DOA. Return it for a refund. Do I have to wait for Best Buy to get paid back from HP? What if the problem is a faulty disk drive? Do I then have to wait for HP to get paid back by the disk maker, then wait for HP to pay back Best But before I get refunded? But wait, the problem with the disk drive was with one of the chips on the controller. Do I now have to wait for the chip maker to refund to the disk maker to refund to HP to refund to Best Buy before I get my money back?

There is a reason that refunds take so long to process, and it’s not because of billing cycles or credit card processors. It’s because the vendor who is responsible for the refund hangs on to it for as long as it can do so – legally or illegally – in order to make the most off of our money.

Isn’t it funny how companies like Southwest can process a refund and I see it on my card in a matter of days, yet others take months? Does Southwest have a special system for processing refunds? You betcha. The system is that they process the refund, rather than holding onto it for dear life like a lot of unethical companies out there

We do know a few things, however. The multiple airlines aspect of your post is inaccurate. The monetary exchange is between the carrier whose ticket stock the ticket was issued on. That carrier pays the other airlines on the ticket.

The agency is reluctant to refund tickets because they fear debit memos. Generally, as we understand it, passenger pays agency, who issues tickets on their account with the airline. That account is paid by the agency to the airline. So, there is not a direct transfer of funds from the passenger to the airline if purchased through a third-party.

A debit memo would be the airline charging the agency for something the agency did wrong, ie refunding a nonrefundable ticket, or miscalculating the additional collection on a reissue. Agencies tend to try to get the airline to reissue or refund tickets directly to avoid this. Of course, many travel agencies, including the large ones, such as Orbitz, try to get the airline to do any work past the initial issuance of the ticket, despite the fact, as travel agencies, they are not only equipped to do such things, but it is expected of them.

The agency should not fear a debit in the case described, as most airlines have a provision that a schedule change of sufficient magnitude, certainly one causing a misconnection, on a refundable ticket automatically entitles the passenger to a full refund. But, agencies, even in this circumstances, want the airline to process the change, or issue a waiver code to the agencies to ensure they won’t be penalized, slowing down the process.

The final issue, on both the airline and agency end is manpower. Organizations set up automated systems to expedite the issuance of tickets. Most often, refunds must be processed by a human being, and precious resources are not wasted on giving away money, as opposed to taking it in. At Orbitz, the agents you generally speak to are not the ones who process tickets, we gathered they have a department to handle ticket reissues and refunds that is separate.

Why Mr. Wortel’s refund was not processed, in our opinion, is Orbitz not devoting the resources to it. After several calls to them, Orbitz should have, if exercising good customer service, prioritized his refund for immediate processing…the squeaky wheel should get the grease.