I booked a YYZ-BOM Mar 21 Lufthansa flight with Gate1.ca for C$1017.02 on Feb 27 using my BMO credit card.

On Mar 13, India stopped all incoming flights and on Mar 17, Gate.ca sent me an email "action required: travel restriction on your booking" stating I have booked a trip to a country with possible travel restrictions and to choose one of 3 options within 24 hours or risk losing the entire value of the ticket: a) keep my booking b) change my booking c) cancel my booking. I obviously chose "cancel my booking: I don’t want to travel and would like to cancel my booking. Gate1.ca will request a partial refund for the refundable components as stated in the ticket conditions. Please keep in mind that most tickets are non-refundable, with the exception of specific (airport) taxes*." Lufthansa had anyway cancelled all their flights I believe, so I assumed this would make no difference.

After hundreds of emails asking about the status of refund, I received an automated email "Your refund is on its way" on Aug 11, for an amount of C$853.72 credited to my card. I immediately emailed them to ask about the C$163.30 difference and they responded: "it is possible that there is a slight (this is definitely not SLIGHT!!!) difference in the amounts, this is due to the fact that we are based in Europe. In this case when you perform the payment on our website your bank might charge you for the cross border payments, which are non-refundable. As this amount is held locally by your bank, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do at this point and we therefore request you to contact your bank for further details. Furthermore you are charged a 75 CAD for cancellation, as you have chosen our Basic Service package."

I contacted BMO and they stated that the charge was levied in CAD itself and there are no conversion charges at their end. Also, I'm past their 100 day period to file a dispute for the difference so they can't help me with anything. I also contacted Lufthansa and although they can't directly help with third-party bookings, they agreed that I should receive a full refund for this.

So now, I'm stuck with a C$163.30 theft from this rogue company for no fault of mine, when all my friends who booked with other agents got a FULL refund for all their cancellations. I'm not really convinced that there is nothing I can do in this case, and I am willing to file a legal complaint somewhere against this if need be.

Can someone please help me about my options on how to proceed here? (Not really looking for "you can't do anything" answers.) More than the money, its about the dishonesty and theft.

Thanks so much!