Online Travel Booking and Bidding Agencies - Cheaptickets.com and Weather Flight cancelation question

Weather Flight cancelation question

Last week I had booked a person on a flight thru cheaptickets.com the flight turned out to be a code share flight between United and American as follows.

The traveler was going from MSP to STL.

The flight portion was split between UAL and American.

Leg 1. MSP to ORD (UAL) no problem.
Leg 2. ORD to STL (AA) all flights canceled due to weather in St. Louis for the whole day. So the traveler had now choice but to return on UAL back to MSP.

Leg 3. STL to ORD (AA) never taken since leg 2 was cancled.
Leg 4. ORD to MSP (UAL) Honored 24 hours ahead of time since ORD to MSP was not effected by the snow and ice storm.

So Legs 2. & 3 which were on American were never used as all flights were canceled preventing Leg 2 to be used. How do I go about either getting credit for the unused American legs.

Who should I be looking to for assistance in getting credit back for the portion of the ticket that was canceled. I don't mind the credit as I need to rebook the person to make the trip in the future.

Well there is a ticket number. Which ticket stock is it ?

Also if there is a flight cancelled I would say it was ultimately the travellers choice to immediately turn back to MSP. Unfortunately that is the rule when weather impacts are there. Next day would probably have been an option. I had to stay overnight in ORD twice on my own expense in order to get on in my travels.

You can always try to ask again either at the agency where you got your ticket. To contact AA is bad luck I would say as they might say it's weather related (very popular excuse on AA for EVERYTHING), UA will say it's out of their responsibility and the PAX flew all UA legs that were booked. I doubt there was a codeshare between UA & AA. Cheaptickets simply mixed 2 carrier in one ticket in order to get the lowest price.

Tough luck in my opinion :(

I dont know how much the ticket was but dealing with cheaptickets customer service will let the actual distressed situation look like a sunny sunday morning ! Ergo: You wont see a cent.

No I did use the term CODE SHARE but then changed it when he corrected me that it was not a CODE SHARE. Still confused on that issue but I did call Cheaptickets and spoke to a nice lady who realy was very pleasant to chat with on the phone. Thats very unusal these days and she was in the states.

She told me it was not Cheaptickets isssue on how to handle the ticket and my blood started to boil a little. She said the ticket was OWNED by UAL and that UAL would have to be contacted and would determine the outcome of the unused portion.

Called UAL and went to voicemail hell. But when I did speak with a live person accross the world in New Dehli he politely told me that the portion on American Airlines was still open and could be used for up to one year from the date of issue. He was a good rep for UAL and spoke perfect english and I appreciated that his response was what I wanted to hear from United.

All in all I am satisfied with UAL and Cheaptickets now that I know I have not flushed the money down the drain. The ticket was $500.00 and I have a credit of $227.00 hanging out there to use.

Thanks for your advice on FlyerTalk.