Refund taking a long time
 

I had a business class booking, which I called to cancel on July 9th. The agent said I'd receive a refund on my credit card soon, minus the 20 euro service charge (+ 22 euros in secret premium phone number charges, thanks Aegean, very cool :tu:)

While the phone service was answered almost immediately, my experience with Aegean responding to emails has not been great (sent in a request on July 18th, no response).

Are refunds typically taking this long? What's the most effective way to prod Aegean about this, without calling their expensive phone number?

What exactly is "their expensive premium phone number" and their "secret premium phone number"? :confused:
You know you could always use a service like Skype and call them for a fraction of the cost you mentioned (or even completely free), right?

Today I have received an email informing me of a successful refund. I have filed the request on July 13. So it may take time.

The Aegean CS is under a regular 210 Athens number. Not premium for sure.

Sorry, I should've mentioned; I'm UK based, and the first number listed on Aegean's contact page under "United Kingdom" is a UK-based number beginning with 0871, which - I didn't remember at the time - are premium rate numbers. My 21 minute 58 second phone call to them cost me GBP 18.70.

If it had been a non-UK number, I would've used Skype for sure!

Ouch, wow, that hurt! Well since you're already browsing the contact information page, select Greece instead of UK and dial that number. It literally rings once and then the automated answering system comes up and says: "Aegean Airlines. To continue in English, please press..." and then a digit (it's either 1 or 2 :p). So you'll certainly get through to English-speaking phone agents via that number, I'm not familiar with what call center the UK super premium number actually connects to, but I would take a wild guess that it's the same as with the Greek number :D​​​​​​.

The second number under UK, which is (+44) 208 7593800, is a normal UK landline number. If your phone package includes free minutes then it will cost you nothing extra. This number redirects you to the regular Greek call centre and is the number I have always called from the UK.

In the past, they would answer the phone in Greek, but all the agents spoke English once you started speaking it. About 5 years ago they started answering in English, so something must have changed to let the agent know.

For future reference, in the UK only 01,02 and 03 are normal numbers. Anything starting 08, except 0800 and 0808, is likely to be very costly. Most 07 are UK mobiles which should be charged at the usual call rates, but some are not and can be very expensive too, and there is no good way to tell the difference quickly unless you have an extremely good memory for numbers.

Not sure if you are a long-term UK resident, but if you are planning to stay longer, this is pretty standard for UK companies. When I lived there, I remember a lot of companies refused to even list a non-premium contact option.
So I recommend this website. Saved me hundreds if not thousands of pounds over the years.
https://www.saynoto0870.com

But yeah, as for slow refunds, my refund in Spring took about 10 weeks.

Since 2014, it has been illegal for businesses in the UK to use phone numbers that are charged at more than the "basic rate" for customer service, in relation to an existing contract with the business. Expensive numbers can be used only for new sales.

So that website was very helpful in the past, but now it's only likely to be useful in niche situations.

Indeed - additionally, I believe the company must clearly display the cost of the premium number wherever the number is displayed. Aegean sure doesn't do that, either.