The gate folks said they couldn’t give us a refund then and there becasue the ticket was held by Iceland Air. Iceland Air would not talk to us because were were not the “agent.”

Hotwire at first said it was not their problem and we should talk to Iceland. After telling Hotwire what Iceland said, and advising them we wanted them to act like our agent, Hot wire claims to have talked to Iceland and arranged a refund.

After the four weeks, when Hotwire claims the refund would be posted we called Hotwire again, For the nature of the discussion, see paragraph above. The only difference this time was that we were to wait 8 weeks for the post of the refund.

The refund should have been posted by late August or September. NOTHING.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I completely agree with Carver. When I use a travel agent, even an online one,
I expect that that company becomes basically my spokesperson for that trip. That is the service for which I am paying. If something goes awry, I call them and they handle it. If I wanted to have to fix any and all problems myself, I would’ve made each individual reservation (which, some have pointed out, is sometimes the way to go).

I would be curious to understand your reasoning. The customer paid Expedia. The customer should only have to deal with Expedia since Expedia is the one that took the customer’s money. Otherwise what value is Expedia providing?

Just another day on the Elliott blog. ;-)

a) A thief steals a credit card, charges a refundable ticket, calls to cancel, and has the refund issued as a bank transfer, check, whatever. By the time the original theft and charge is noticed, he can be long gone with the moeny.

b) Someone charges a refundable ticket to a credit card legitimately, cancels, and has the refund sent in another form. Later, he begins a credit dispute with the credit card company, which could side with him if the airline can’t prove that the cardholder got the money.

and so on.

There are ways around the problem, when you no longer have the credit card, but that almost always requires escalation to verify that it’s not a fraud issue.

I believe the client should have contacted Continental, and not Expedia, because the flight did not leave as scheduled. The client would have got a voucher from them by now if he had contacted the airline’s customer service department. Expedia did the right thing by issuing a refund, but I would have sent the client to the airline. You were absolutely correct about the funds being with the carrier, but one of the rules of every airfare is that partially used tickets are non-refundable. The other question would have been, was the flight canceled due to bad weather? If that was the case, then the airline would have been responsible for getting the client back on another carrier. Can you clarify what exactly happened there?

Sincerely

Sonny

A) Booking direct with the airlines and hotel yourself. Forget these online sites. Otherwise, use a face to face travel agent.

B) Never I repeat NEVER cancel your credit card that made payment UNTIL after all travel has been completed.

C) Should a place refuse to refund, B is important and A is just as crucial. If you book direct with airline or hotel, getting a refund or a dispute is by far easier.

Think of a purchase at Wal-Mart. You buy a TV and it doesn’t work, so you take it back to Wal-Mart for a refund. Do you have to wait until Samsung refunds the money back to Wal-Mart before you get your money back? Would you accept that from Wal-Mart? If not, then why accept it from Expedia. How they handle their monetary transactions with their vendors is their problem, and we shouldn’t be held hostage because they don’t want to do business the right way.