Marian Houk’s Swiss refund problem is a cautionary tale about rescheduling your flight, corporate stubbornness and failure — my failure.
That’s right, I dropped the ball on this one (but I didn’t lose the game). I’ll explain in a minute.
Houk was flying from Denver to Larnaca, Cyprus, on Swiss International Airlines. She was careful to book a flexible and fully refundable fare, knowing that her itinerary might change.
And it did — several times. By the time she contacted our advocacy organization, Swiss owed her $2,004, and the airline showed no signs of being willing to pay her.
“I want my fully flexible and refundable fare refunded,” she told me.
Is that even possible? Houk’s case raises a few questions about what to do when a company refuses to talk about a case, and even what to do when a consumer advocate goes into radio silence.
“I lost confidence in Swiss”
Houk’s itinerary grew unnecessarily complicated almost immediately. Although her final destination was Larnaca, she discovered she could only book part of her flight — Denver to Zürich — online Ultimately, she had to book the last leg of her flight by calling Swiss.
Her flights were operated by the Swiss charter company, Edelweiss.
Houk changed her flights. Swiss — or should I say Edelweiss — kept up with the first change, offering her an $80 refund because her new flights were cheaper.
Then she changed the tickets again, this time altering only the segment from Denver to Zürich.
At that point, the whole booking began to unravel.
Swiss promised her another refund of $128, but she never received it.
“In addition, I never received an e-ticket for the final itinerary,” she says.
She could not check her itinerary online. She had no way of asking for an upgrade. And she didn’t even know if she could fly, saying “I lost confidence in Swiss.”
Houk was so exasperated with the process that she canceled the entire itinerary on the day of her departure and asked for a full refund. But several months later, the money was still missing and Swiss wasn’t answering her emails.
It was time to ask for help from Elliott Advocacy.
How not to handle a reschedule for your airline ticket
As I already mentioned, this Swiss refund problem is a case study in how not to handle a rescheduling. You can easily confuse an airline.
- First, make two reservations — one through its charter carrier and another through the regular airline. With any luck, the companies will use separate reservations systems, making it difficult to connect the reservation.
- To make things interesting, make one reservation online and another by phone.
- Change your schedule. Then change it again, but this time only change one segment — you know, just to keep them on their toes.
- Finally, cancel the entire reservation after the airline has already issued two partial refunds.
And apparently, that’s how you confuse a company even as well organized as Swiss. Because there’s no question Swiss was confused.
How do you book a multileg, refundable airline ticket?
There’s a right way to book a multileg, refundable airline ticket. Actually, you have a few options.
Book it yourself
If you book a ticket yourself, use an airline that serves the destination with its own metal (which is to say, it operates all the flights with its own planes). Ideally, this would be a single flight. You can make a fully refundable reservation online, and there will be no confusion when you have to change plans.
But in the real world, it’s not always that simple. You may have to book a connecting flight with another airline. Try to do this with a codeshare partner, and make sure the tickets are connected — in other words, on the same itinerary. The best way to do that is to book everything through the same airline at the same time.
Use a travel advisor
A competent travel agent can make sure you have the best flexible tickets and can handle any changes. You may have to pay an extra booking fee, but if it’s a complicated ticket, it’s definitely worth it. Your agent can also help if the airline promises a refund but then fails to follow through. Let’s just say, they know people on the inside. They can take care of things for you.
But Houk’s case was about to take a strange and unfortunate twist.
Swiss: We won’t talk about this case
I felt terrible for Houk. Sure, she had made a few rookie mistakes when she booked her ticket to Cyprus, but should she lose $2,004 because of it? I didn’t think so.
So I reached out to Swiss. I received an answer that is new to me:
Thank you very much for your enquiry and your interest in our company. We will of course look into the case as quickly as possible. However, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we require the consent of the affected passengers to be able to provide you with more information on it.
Consent? You mean, like the form every reader must fill out before they ask my advocacy team for help.
No, Swiss had its own form and it demanded to see a copy of Houk’s ID.
And here’s where the case went off the rails. I asked Swiss to pass the case along to the right people, but the airline refused, saying that it needed me to send more paperwork. I didn’t want to trouble Houk with a request for her ID, which seems a little creepy, so we were at a stalemate. (Related: Why won’t Swiss International Air Lines compensate me for my lost luggage?)
As a side note, many European companies are using GDPR as an excuse to not engage with their own customers. We have a growing list of airlines that simply ignore our requests. However, that doesn’t stop me from writing about them.
It turns out Swiss ignored its own request for more paperwork. It did indeed send her case along to the right department to review.
A very strange ending to this Swiss refund case
A month after I contacted Swiss, I heard back from Houk.
“Just to let you know, Swiss International Air Lines has now refunded, in several different credits to my American Express card, the full refund amount due,” she said. (Related: Swiss lost luggage problem: Can the airline only refund me for half my expenses?)
Good news, right? Well, not exactly.
“I can’t know the reason you responded to me and then ceased to respond, to my request for your help,” she added. “But since you did reply once, I am writing to let you know that I managed the rest, using your method.”
Huh?
I checked my emails. I had responded to her twice — once to ask her for more information, which is standard. And once to let her know that I had contacted Swiss. (Here’s our best guide to resolving your consumer problem.)
It looked as if my responses had gone to her spam folder, which is quite common. But what’s less common is that apparently her follow-up requests had also gone to my spam folder — which is why she thought I was ignoring her.
Houk also said that she called me. I screen all my calls and read the transcript to see if I need to respond. It looks like I didn’t connect the calls to her case, which I should have.
The takeaway from this Swiss refund case? Where do I even start?
Houk’s case shows how easy it is to confuse an airline, even a Swiss airline. (Although technically, it’s a German airline owned by Lufthansa. But still.)
It suggests you have to be careful when you book a complex itinerary, because it’s easy to break the system. And if you do, you might be the one who has to pay the price.
And finally, there’s the takeaway for me. I need to screen my calls with greater care. I should have circled back with Houk after Swiss told me it would not help, even though it eventually did. And after this, I will always check my spam folder.
