Well it's a bit special with flights cancellations, normally I was able to get chargeback through - and I was 110% sure my chargebacks would get through with the flight tickets because if a flight is being cancelled by an airline, a FULL refund should be given from the airline or TA/OTA governed by EU261. It came to me as a shock when I first called my card issuer 4 months after the flight was cancelled without hearing a word from the travel agency - that's what I was told about "unless the merchant stating that they won't pay you back we won't carry out the chargeback". That's why I went to DOT and got a statement from CA stating that they have paid back the OTA, because of the statement the card issuer let me file a chargeback. Took 7 months got my first trip refunded.

The second one was tricky, it was with TK. The OTA cancelled my tickets without my authorization. TK was offering open ticket option but the OTA cancelled my tickets without asking if that's what I wanted. On top of that they wanted to deduct $300 for admin fee for 5 tickets (I would accept that if it's per booking/transaction) for a trip that I never want to cancel. I even called and wrote them that I wanted to keep my tickets and the OTA went ahead and cancel my tickets.

Of course chargeback won't work and I couldn't even chargeback the fee. Anyway, after 6 months the OTA issued a refund minus $300 and I took the case to the Swedish version of BBB and they paid me the $300 before the case was looked at to avoid bad publicity.

The EU 261 states very clearly about the full refund - no matter who you buy it from. Somehow the pandemic made everyone not following the rules.

Lesson learned - so no way I'll pay $ for any future trip until the pandemic is over. I thought AMEX could be a way to go, but then when I saw a guy wrote about his failed chargeback with AMEX UK and I couldn't believe my eyes.