The flight was canceled. One would think getting a refund in such a case would be a fairly simple process. After all, a service paid for was never delivered. Still, we’d booked the flight through a middleman, so to speak, and Lufthansa said we had to deal with this third party. So we dealt with the agency that booked our flights. They informed us that they could not refund all of the money we’d paid for the tickets. For each ticket, Lufthansa would impose a $185 fee and the agency would impose a $100 fee.
I remembered, though, an email I’d gotten from Lufthansa, which read, in part:
The expanded route network offers you, our valued customers, more options for rebooking existing or canceled tickets to a variety of travel destinations, in accordance with the applicable conditions. As I wrote in my last letter, any ticket booked until May 15, 2020, which was affected by a flight cancellation, can be rebooked one time free of charge. You can also apply the value of your booking to a new ticket at a later date. Additionally, your travel date and destination can be changed in our route network. In this case, the rebooking must be made by January 31, 2021 and your new trip must begin by December 31, 2021. For a new confirmed travel date up to December 31, 2020, we will give you an additional € 50 toward bookings changed by August 31, 2020. Should you prefer a refund, this option is also available. We are increasing the capacities in order to process refunds more quickly.
I called back and forwarded the email to the agency as we spoke.
“Well, sir, that was just an email Lufthansa sent out to all ticket holders. Your ticket was purchased with many restrictions.”
“I don’t recall being informed of any such restrictions. The email doesn’t indicate that tickets purchased with certain restrictions are not eligible,” I replied with surprising calm.
I’d done a little research about them before calling and found the following notes at a review site, all published within the last week:
One star is too much for this company. Sure, the agents that book your trip are friendly and the prices are cheap. HOWEVER, this company is dubious. They are now charging people to cancel flights, as necessary due to the pandemic. I had a trip booked to go to Greece, and the airline required me to cancel it through the travel agent —-. —- charged $150 to my credit card, without my consent, just to cancel my flight. I’m working with my credit card to stop the payment, but —- is fighting back, saying I agreed to this term. LIARS! Save yourself and NEVER use this company. It’s incomprehensible that they would attempt to profit from the pandemic. Shame on them.
Another also seemed to have issues with getting refunds: “Horrible horrible con-artist at best. you are taking a chance using this company, refuse to give back refunds approved by airlines.” And then there was this long story:
As many others said, i am also having issues receiving my refund! My flight to Europe was canceled, i was willing to change the flight, but they said the airline has no other flights this month. So i requested a refund. I purchased another flight with another agency, surprisingly they had flights with the same airline for dates i wanted. I called —- today for an update on my refund and Owen said that the airline put a hold on all refunds. That was odd to me. Right after, i called an airline directly, and they said they did not put a hold on any refunds and they are processing refunds, but they were unable to help me because the agency is the one that has to request a refund from them. I emailed —- rep who told me the airline put a stop to refunds and told him what i was told by the airline rep…no response… Im disappointed on how they are handling this.. They are very nice when purchasing the flights to get your business but this is unacceptable! I refuse to have almost 4k stolen!!
What I suspected was that they were planning on pocketing that money for themselves. I suggested that legal action might be required.
“I am just informing you of your options,” the man replied, completely non-plussed.
In the end, though, he told me he would do what he could and called back much later saying that he’d talked to the airline, and they’d agreed to waive the fee. “Bullshit,” I thought. “Your manager agreed to waive that fee.” However, they insisted on the $100/ticket service charge. Now, we’d been working on this all afternoon, and we’d called other friends who’d been in the same situation (one of whom was also flying Lufthansa), and they’d had no problems getting refunds and their cancelation fee was non-existent or only $50. At that point, though, I was just tired of the fight. We’d been working on the issue for five hours, and I just felt exhausted with the whole thing.
I think that’s what they were counting on.