Originally Posted by
bce1
I would guess they took the cost of a first class return ticket, where the first sector wasn't used due to them cancelling the flight and credited it against a new one-way ticket home. They were probably similar costs - as you probably know, a one-way is often 75-100% cost of a return, particularly at short notice. The CSO probably thought they were helping - but he has probably screwed up the process here.
The new ticket was issued and used, and then you initiated a chargeback on it. So they feel they are out of pocket for the one-way flight in F, which you used.
I think you are right here, but I would gamble that this is what happened and why they feel you have ripped them off, not the other way around.
A UK261 would have been cleaner.
True, but the fact that a one-way ticket is costs more is not my fault, they cancelled the outbound flight and I shouldn't be out of pocket. They also had ample opportunity to respond to me before I initiated the chargeback.
I think the CSO was trying to help Emirates more than me. He saw the potential loss of £8k if I didn't take the return journey. In fact, he probably knew that issuing a return ticket would make it impossible to get the outbound journey refunded using normal channels.
As for the UK261 being cleaner, I think that's debatable. Based on my experience I would argue any scenario where they were forced to issue a refund would result in my blacklisting. The cleaner approach with the benefit of hindsight would have been to book an Air France round trip and tell Emirates that I abandoned the trip entirely, but I wanted to try First Class.