ticket refund: poor response from Travelocity and Aeroflot ?
I am looking for help / advice on resolving a non-standard situation with Travelocity and Aeroflot.
I booked Aeroflot ticket for my mother through Travelocity. Then she had a serious health issue and had to cancel the trip for medical reason. Aeroflot said that, for such reason, this ticket was refundable, if proper documentation was provided (letter from doctor's office). Mo mother came to Aeroflot office in St Petersburg and provided the document, at which point she was told that Travelocity has to contact Aeroflot to get this refund going.
My wife called Travelocity multiple times, and emailed them the scanned document ~4 times. They dragged their response for more than a week, could not even confirm reception of email with documentation, and finally said that they called Aeroflot and were denied the refund.
I tried to escalate it on both sides, assuming that there is some misunderstanding here. Aeroflot Call Center keeps telling me that the refund is possible, but they are not set up to even see the details of my claim. Travelocity call center tells me that they cannot even disclose the details of their conversation with Aeroflot to me, the only thing I have is the Aeroflot Agent ID of the person they talked to.
On both sides, my feeling is that I am talking to people who know how to respond to standard scripted situations, but do not know how to handle this non-standard case. In case of Travelocity, this applies even to their "supervisor" level.
Does anyone have similar experience and advice on how to push this matter in a productive way ? I feel like I need to find decision-making people on both sides and set up a 3-way conference call with them to figure this out, but even finding such a person proves to be a challenge, I am getting nowhere after 4-5 rounds of speaking with each side.
If normal communication does not wok, is there some entity like BBB that would be helpful ? I assume that both Travelocity and Aeroflot might become more responsive if I get the appropriate overseeing body to talk on my behalf.
Thank you in advance for help,
Yuriy.