Airfare refund delay through ChoiceAir

[Tottwo]

Hi,

I am wondering what others have experienced. On our return trip back home, we got caught up in the massive JetBlue cancellations that occurred due to bad weather the beginning of Jan. Our flight from FLL to east coast was canceled. Unfortunately JetBlue booked us on a flight 3 days later than we needed to be back home so we ended up taking a flight out of a different airport on a different airline. As promised, JetBlue issued a refund however, because we booked our flights through ChoiceAir, JetBlue issued the refund to them. 4 weeks later we still have not seen the refund.

 

Has anyone had a similar experience where the airline issued a refund right away, but 4 weeks later you still haven't seen it show up on your credit card? I've called JetBlue who said they issued the refund to the 'travel agent' and I needed to call them. I called ChoiceAir and they said they have not seen the refund yet but will keep an eye out for it. They said it could take 8 to 10 weeks for the refund to come through. Is this standard?

 

I tried searching the forum to see if the answer is among the previous ChoiceAir threads but did not have any luck.

 

Thanks

[kenish]

I subscribe to various travel ombudsman sites. It's unfortunately pretty common for an airline, hotel, etc. to claim they refunded money to an agent- while the agent claims they haven't received it, or worse yet tell the customer they need to deal with the airline!

 

At least in your case, Choice Air isn't telling you to go talk to JetBlue. Stay on top of Choice Air. Also, if it takes JetBlue 2 weeks to issue your refund and Choice Air another few weeks, it may not show up until 1-2 billing cycles later. FYI this isn't unique to Choice Air...it seems to happen with consolidators as well as 3rd party booking sites such as Travelocity, Expedia, etc.

 

One question...when your flight home was cancelled, did you explicitly tell JetBlue you couldn't take the flight 3-days later, and did they agree to refund your ticket? If you simply failed to show up for the rebooked flight, it might be handled as a no-show and they may not owe any refund depending on your fare class and whether JetBlue had travel waivers in place.

 

Let us know how this plays out.

Edited February 6, 2014 by kenish

[Tottwo]

Thanks for your reply, kenish. I appreciate your feedback. Its unfortunate for us that this happens often. At least my case is not an isolated one.

 

We did tell JetBlue that the flight they put us on wouldn't work. They said that was the best they could do and, given the circumstances with the weather and cancellations, we had up until the day of the flight to cancel and get a full refund. We called them as soon as we got home to cancel (two days before the rescheduled flight) and were told again we'd get a refund and to use the reservation # as our cancellation number. We naively thought we'd see the refund soon after and didn't think it needed to go back through Choice Air.

 

I'll stay on Choice Air as you suggest. I hope to give a positive update to this post sometime soon.

 

Thanks!