I found a CRAZY low fare a few weeks back that was roundtrip from EU to US on Iceland Air. The OTA was GoToGate and their fare was 50% less than anywhere else or direct from FI. I booked it right away (but before I booked it, I double checked what
GoToGates policy was.)
The conditions for changing flight bookings (including change of passenger name, destination, and date of travel) and for providing cancellation refunds are set by the relevant airline, which is your contractual partner for providing the flight. We, as the intermediary, have no influence over such conditions.
I checked with FI and their terms include a 24-hr free cancellation. I went ahead and booked. Of course, the next day I changed my mind and called GoToGate to cancel. The agent put me on hold for 20 minutes before coming back and telling me that Iceland Air did not allow 24-hr cancellation. She told me I could contact FI directly to confirm this. I asked for a supervisor, was placed on hold for another 30 minutes and she returned to tell me that a supervisor was not available and would not be able to do anything differently.
I contacted FI to cancel and they told me that it was a cancellable fare since we were inside of 24 hrs but that it needed to be cancelled through the OTA. She wasn't able to conference them in but did provide me a OTA help desk number for GoToGate to contact. Another call (and more holding with GtG) resulted in the "this is a non-refundable fare" response.
Fed up I decided to go ahead and dispute it with Chase and let them sort it out. Here's my big issue though.... the flight is usable for me (but not ideal) and is coming up in 3 weeks. I've found better flights now that are even less expensive and would like to book them...... but I'm terrified that I'm going to lose the CC dispute and be charged for the tickets. I really don't want two sets of overlapping flights.
What would you do and how would you proceed?
PS -- I've learned my lesson and will no longer book flights through shady OTAs.