Q: My husband recently booked four nights at a hotel in San Antonio, Texas, through Travelocity. Unfortunately, his mother suffered a stroke and was hospitalized before he was supposed to leave.
I canceled his reservation and was told we would get a refund for three nights totaling $630. It’s been almost two months and we have not received any money back. I’ve called Travelocity six times, with each call lasting about half an hour — but still, nothing.
I’ve found many descriptions of this same problem on the Internet. Is there anything that can be done to help with getting my hard-earned money back? I would give up, but now I’ve invested even more time and effort into getting my refund.
This has been very frustrating. I would appreciate any assistance you could provide.
– Lynn Jones, Dayton, Ohio
A: Two months is too long to wait for a refund. If a travel agent can submit a charge to your credit card in a minute or less, why can’t it credit your account in the same amount of time?
There’s a simple answer and a complicated one.
The simple answer is that companies tend to invest in technologies that bring in money — in other words, they’re more than willing to pay for something that takes your money faster, like a state-of-the-art credit-card processing program, but not so keen on buying technology that allows it to return your money.
The complex answer: It isn’t always up to the travel agency. If your money has already been passed along to the airline or hotel, then your online agent needs to ask that company to return the money. And that’s where things can get sticky.
In your case, it’s complicated. According to Travelocity spokesman Joel Frey, “The refund was delayed because the hotel originally billed Travelocity in full, and Travelocity had to wait for the hotel to send the refund.”
Is there any way you could have prevented this from happening? Maybe. The sooner you know that the trip is canceled, the sooner you should notify your travel agency. That way it can begin processing your refund.
Travelocity should have given you a straight answer about the status of your refund sooner. And it shouldn’t make its customers wait until it has the money before issuing a refund. In fact, Frey said that the company is aware of the problem. He said, “Travelocity is currently devoting additional resources to better expediting refunds, so this problem should be less likely to repeat itself.”
Travelocity issued a refund of $473, which represents a full refund for all except the first night. That is the exact amount the company should have promised — and delivered — in less than two months.
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Another example of why you should use a travel agent. She would have gotten the same price if she had told the ageny the price online, gotten decent service,and most important she would not have to pay one cent up front.