FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Big trap in American Airlines 24-hour refund policy
Old Jun 11, 2022, 8:17 pm
  #65  
Lux Flyer
 
Join Date: May 2017
Posts: 2,267
Originally Posted by VegasGambler
United's published policy matches the DOT requirement -- you must purchase 7 or more days prior to departure to be eligible for a refund within 24hr. So AA is much more generous, at least in their published policy. I'm not sure what UA does in practice or if status plays into it.

https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...ng-policy.html

We know that life happens, and you may need to change your travel plans unexpectedly. United's 24-hour flexible booking policy gives you the freedom to make changes to select reservations within 24 hours of booking and ticketing, without being charged change fees if you made your purchase one week or more before the flight was scheduled to depart. This includes canceling your reservation and requesting a full refund of the ticket price. Although Basic Economy reservations aren’t eligible for changes within 24 hours, they’re still eligible for a full refund if you cancel within 24 hours and you made your purchase one week or more before the flight was scheduled to depart. Please view the terms and conditions below for more details.
Yes, but there is a loophole in UA's ancient reservation system that doesn't enforce the 7 day requirement, nor 24-hours exactly, which is what the earlier poster was alluding to, how they could buy non-refundable on UA and refund it 36+ hours later, while they're forced to buy a refundable on AA in order to guarantee they get a full refund beyond 24 hours (or just not fly AA). UA's system doesn't look at the time it was ticketed, just at the ticketing date, so you could buy a ticket at 12:01 AM on 6/11/2021, for a flight on 6/13, and refund it up until 11:59PM on 6/12/2021, almost a full 48 hours later, and well within the 7 day cutoff that the policy specifies. My impression is this is a consequence of their 20+ year old software only checking the ticketing date, and that they are in the process of progressively rolling out a new web browser based reservation management system ("Navigator") that will be more strict on checking against the flexible booking policy when requesting a refund (among other improvements). As long as the old software they use is available, the loophole will exist if they go to process the refund that way, but I expect as it gets phased out, the loophole will close to more closely reflect the actual policy.
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