[Update: We called ANA here in the states and confirmed they will give us the refund after our rep spoke with the supervisor. A HUGE THANKS TO EVERYONE HERE!]

Hey first time poster here - tons of good information; just wanted to share a recent experience we had with a refund policy difference between the US ANA website (fly-ana.com) and the Japan ANA website (ana.co.jp, even though if you go to fly-ana.com it redirects you to ana.co.jp...*smh*).

As most of you might know, there is a 24hr cancellation policy for a full refund as long as the flight is not scheduled to depart within the next 7 days. My wife is Japanese and we live in the states, and she made a booking through ana.co.jp but realized that we had to re-book the flight through fly-ana.com per American Express' rules. Knowing that ANA's policy is a no-penalty cancellation within 24 hours, we cancelled the booking on the original flight booked through ana.co.jp.

However, this 24hr cancellation policy does not exist on the Japanese website - yes, going to fly-ana.com redirects you to ana.co.jp anyways but your initial portal makes all the difference. We spoke with ANA customer service in Japan and they were willing to give us the refund, but only the taxes and fees, which were $241.94 in comparison to the rest of the ticket cost of $840.

We've contacted American Express and they will reach out to the merchant (ANA) to see if there is anything we can work out but we're not crossing our fingers.

It was an expensive $800 mistake but I guess we'll still get 4000MR points through our Amex Platinum card.

Just wanted to throw some info out here so no one else makes this mistake (it's a rare case but could happen).