Originally Posted by
Often1
Redemption cancellations are not the same set of incentives as cash. The points do not impact the carrier's cash and the taxes are refunded to the consumer rather than paid to government authorities, thus they net to zero. Cash, on the other hand, goes straight to the carrier's ability to operate.
All of this shows that SK is perfectly capable of issuing cash refunds in short order.
In principle, you are right. But likely this is done by a different office, which is likely underutilized now, as I do not expect that there is more EB cases to handle now that in normal operation. People are not buying awards, etc. Of course, SK could reallocate EB folks to the regular customer service, but ... well experience from other organizations shows that this is often not easy. Also probably there is much less folks in the EB agency than in the general travel agent, so the impact could be minor.