Umm kind of sort of a compliment to US. At least it is a story not about baggage screw ups.


Kristine Lopez wanted to buy tickets from Philadelphia to Tampa, Fla. But when she clicked the "submit" button to book a seat on the US Airways Web site, nothing happened. No receipt, no confirmation e-mail. So she logged on a few hours later and bought more tickets. This time, her purchase went through. But her credit-card bill tells a different story. The airline actually charged her twice - once for the tickets she believed she hadn't bought, and another time for the ones she did. Now Lopez wants her money back for one set. US Airways won't do it, citing its "no refunds" policy. Is she out of luck?

Rest at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6759248/

Anytime something like that happens I call up reservations and ask them if they see anything for the first reservation. It's the nature of the internet that even if you don't see anything on the screen, they very well may have processed the transaction on the server side.

And I would have checked my credit card statement online, as most of the companies show the temporary transactions and I would've probably seen the double charge there.

I do think it's bad form for US not to credit her money back though, especially given how flaky the website is, and that it's two tickets for the same itinerary.

also isn't there a 24 hour grace period after booking where you can cancel without a penalty?

Some airlines have software that searches for duplicate bookings. Does US?

also isn't there a 24 hour grace period after booking where you can cancel without a penalty?Only on UA AFAIK. But then again I am not up to date on US ticketing rules.

Only on UA AFAIK. But then again I am not up to date on US ticketing rules.

Although I've not cancelled a flight within 24 hours, last week US allowed me to change flights about 6 hours after I originally booked my ticket (w/o a charge).

I've also recently had a mini-war with giftcertificates.com with one purchase that went through 3x. They absolutely will not refund the extra purchases. I've not let AMEX deal with them....

also isn't there a 24 hour grace period after booking where you can cancel without a penalty?

It's part of the "customer committment" to allow 24 hours. I used this after I booked a trip that I realized left RIGHT as the superbowl was to start last year and got no hassels. At the time I had no status on US and is one of the reasons I switched to them (AA is much worse about this):

http://www.usair.com/customers/customer_commitment/#Commitment #5

Sean

Don't know if the bankruptcy changes this, but if the pax were to challenge the charge with the cc company, she'd win for sure. Same with haveric's dispute. I've had this happen and the cc company has always backed me. Now, this was not for a bankrupt carrier, so I don't know if that would affect the outcome. tls

I've cancelled many flights within 24 hours. But if I remember the details of this story (it was posted on FT a few weeks ago) the person didn't notice the dupe until the bill was received. (IMHO, she should have checked after the initial problem).

US does have a sweep for duplicate reservations at least in some cases - someone recently posted about having a MR cancelled as US couldn't figure why anyone would want to fly between two cities twice in the same day :)

US, UA, and NW (at least) all have the 24 hour rule, and I think basically all the majors do. Because of the way NW's is written, it can actually be up to 48 hours (midnight of the next calendar day).

But when she clicked the "submit" button to book a seat on the US Airways Web site, nothing happened. No receipt, no confirmation e-mail. So she logged on a few hours later and bought more tickets.

:rolleyes:

Stupid. A simple call to US would have revealed whether or not she had a booking. I'm almost tempted to say she deserved this.

:rolleyes:

Stupid. A simple call to US would have revealed whether or not she had a booking. I'm almost tempted to say she deserved this.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame her. The website was clearly at fault here for failing to make it clear whether she had purchased tickets. And furthermore the booking software used by US Air should be intelligent enough to question where someone really wanted to buy two seats on the same flight, under the same name.

As I am sure the individual, probably as a novice flyer wouldn't have thought to call US Air. Sure some of the blame is on her, but I would say most of it belongs to US Air in this case.

It's part of the "customer committment" to allow 24 hours. I used this after I booked a trip that I realized left RIGHT as the superbowl was to start last year and got no hassels. At the time I had no status on US and is one of the reasons I switched to them (AA is much worse about this):

http://www.usair.com/customers/customer_commitment/#Commitment #5

Sean

Read this carefully:
US Airways is committed to allowing you to cancel a ticket without penalty within 24 hours of making the original reservation.
Some airline tickets carry penalties or restrictions for changes or cancellations. Other tickets can be changed or cancelled at anytime without penalty. Tickets may have other associated nonrefundable fees. We recognize that travelers' plans may change, and US Airways is committed to providing you additional flexibility in booking your flights.

We Commit:

To allow you 24 hours to change your travel plans from the time of your initial reservation, without penalty. You may cancel a ticket purchased through US Airways reservations, an airport or city ticket office or our US Airways web site usairways.com without penalty within 24 hours of making your initial reservation. The refund process is automatic for electronic tickets purchased and then cancelled within 24 hours. Refunds for paper tickets must be processed through US Airways. Customers purchasing nonrefundable tickets for travel within 24 hours of booking must cancel their reservations with US Airways prior to flight departure to be eligible for the refund. Refunds will be processed for the airfare; some ticketing fees are not refundable, for example, the fee paid for a paper ticket.
Please note, some fares are not eligible for refunds or changes at any time, including some fares offered via the internet.

At my preferred carrier, the ticket can be voided on the same calendar day. If you purchased it today at 11pm,you have one hour to cxl it. After that, if it is non refundable, it is non refundable...period. It can be used within one year and usually the reissue fee would be waived.
Cmon folks, nonrefundable means nonrefundable. Yes, she made a mistake. But when it didnt process, dont just log on and make another--call USAirways Internet department! :confused: If they don't see it, yeah make another.

I think (don't quote me, but IIRC) the DOT law is that domestic carriers have to give you either 24 hours to cancel purchases or you may reserve a ticket and hold it for 24 hours. The carrier has a choice as to which policy they set for their airline.

Please note, some fares are not eligible for refunds or changes at any time, including some fares offered via the internet.


Has anyone run into this in practice? I haven't yet, though I almost never use the 24 hour thing (mainly because I rarely book directly through US). I don't recall seeing any language about x fare that I might be buying not being refundable in 24 hours. ?

Maybe that is to cover their butt in the case of say a Hotwire or Priceline ticket? Cause if you could bid on Priceline, win the bid and go "oh I don't like the flights" and refund it within 24 hours, it would kind of defeat the purpose of Priceline.

Mm, there's already language in the guarantee to show that they're only covering tickets bought directly through a USAir channel. So unless they like being redundant this should refer to something else.

Read this carefully:
US Airways is committed to allowing you to cancel a ticket without penalty within 24 hours of making the original reservation.
Some airline tickets carry penalties or restrictions for changes or cancellations. Other tickets can be changed or cancelled at anytime without penalty. Tickets may have other associated nonrefundable fees. We recognize that travelers' plans may change, and US Airways is committed to providing you additional flexibility in booking your flights.

We Commit:

To allow you 24 hours to change your travel plans from the time of your initial reservation, without penalty. You may cancel a ticket purchased through US Airways reservations, an airport or city ticket office or our US Airways web site usairways.com without penalty within 24 hours of making your initial reservation. The refund process is automatic for electronic tickets purchased and then cancelled within 24 hours. Refunds for paper tickets must be processed through US Airways. Customers purchasing nonrefundable tickets for travel within 24 hours of booking must cancel their reservations with US Airways prior to flight departure to be eligible for the refund. Refunds will be processed for the airfare; some ticketing fees are not refundable, for example, the fee paid for a paper ticket.
Please note, some fares are not eligible for refunds or changes at any time, including some fares offered via the internet.

At my preferred carrier, the ticket can be voided on the same calendar day. If you purchased it today at 11pm,you have one hour to cxl it. After that, if it is non refundable, it is non refundable...period. It can be used within one year and usually the reissue fee would be waived.
Cmon folks, nonrefundable means nonrefundable. Yes, she made a mistake. But when it didnt process, dont just log on and make another--call USAirways Internet department! :confused: If they don't see it, yeah make another.


I had web site issues and I, unlike this woman, called and was told "Its no problem sir, you ALWAYS have 24 hours to cancel anyway." I was on an extremely low fare from DCA to STX ($309 is unbeatable) and booked 4 trips all within 5 minutes of each other. Only one got hosed up due to a consistently reproducible bug on the website when changing the day of only the return trip that caused it to tell me that I was booking for one day on the return, only to change the date at the final screen after all was booked. Anyway, they gave me NO hassles whatsoever. This is the 2nd time they gave me no hassles when making a change to an internet reservation. One time I messed up (superbowl incident) and the other they did (website problem).

I agree the woman should've called, but the airline should also have been reasonable. The bottom line is that businesses need even less saavy customers to survive in this day and age, and clearly this woman wasn't trying to scam the system or anything like that.

One of the biggest problems I have with Legacy carriers is until you earn "status" they could care less about you. This is not the case at LCC's as they have no status, and generally provide a much higher level of service to people then legacy's do to customers without status. And then they wonder why they are going into bankrupcy! AA lost my business because on the way to gaining status (about 20,000 miles in 3 months...I should've done a challenge I know) they really screwed me on 3 straight trips and treated me horribly. Thier loss, US's gain (US is generally better all around anyway), and even if US goes Ch. 7 I am going to avoid AA at this point. Anyway, enough OT ranting!

Sean

I am sure that someone is getting SSSSS on her boarding passes. :D

Umm kind of sort of a compliment to US. At least it is a story not about baggage screw ups.


Kristine Lopez wanted to buy tickets from Philadelphia to Tampa, Fla. But when she clicked the "submit" button to book a seat on the US Airways Web site, nothing happened. No receipt, no confirmation e-mail. So she logged on a few hours later and bought more tickets. This time, her purchase went through. But her credit-card bill tells a different story. The airline actually charged her twice - once for the tickets she believed she hadn't bought, and another time for the ones she did. Now Lopez wants her money back for one set. US Airways won't do it, citing its "no refunds" policy. Is she out of luck?

Rest at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6759248/

The exact same thing happened to me; I was in the process of booking a ticket and the website messed up, and then I booked another ticket, and even though I ended up with only 1 ticket I was charged twice. I just called US Airways and the first attempted booking was just completely erased from the system and 1 charge was refunded with no problem. I called within a few hours of making the reservations, though.

I'm sorry, but simple diligence is all that's needed to prevent this mistake.

If the website screws up while booking, why not login to your account and look at your reservations? Why not call the airline?

Kristine Lopez got her refund (http://www.nola.com/living/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-0/110464968166750.xml) according to our favorite blogger Chris Elliott.

I tried search and can't find anything on the US website, but is there still a 24 hour grace period for cancelling a US reservation booked on the US website without a penalty?

I tried search and can't find anything on the US website, but is there still a 24 hour grace period for cancelling a US reservation booked on the US website without a penalty?

No. No longer.