mcbg1

Last year, I booked a flight to South Africa through Cheapoair with Air Canada and Air France. I decided to pay to book a seat in the emergency exit row for the flights with Air Canada at $100 each way. A few weeks before my trip, I got an email saying my itinerary had been changed and all my flights were now with Air France.

I contacted Air Canada to get a refund for my seat reservations and they asked me to fill out a form online which I did. The automatic reply said to expect a minimum 6 weeks to hear back from them but it has been 8 weeks now and still nothing. I have tried contacting them on social media to speed things up but they just said it was in the hands of their refund team and to wait until they get back to me.

Why is this so complicated and is there anything else I can do to get my money back?

Often1

Contact your credit card issuer (bank) and initiate a chargeback. It may be too late, but you should do it anyway.

mcbg1

Only problem is that I paid for these seats with an AC gift card. My grocery store had a 10% off sale on them so I bought a few to pay for my preferred seats.

yul36

Who changed your itinerary, if it was AC you should be fine. If it was the OTA you may have to get the money back from them. I put in a refund last August for an upgrade I could not use as AC rerouted me on UA due to an IT glitch.
I finally got the refund in January 2019.

5mm

D404

Wow. I would have issued a chargeback long before that, myself... 7 months is in no way remotely acceptable.

mcbg1

I paid AC directly for the seats

Often1

This makes no sense.

OP expressly states that he booked his e-ticket through an OTA and paid AC for the seat assignments. That is necessarily two separate transactions.

arf04

If you haven’t filled out this form, do this before you do anything else. I have always found doing it this way to be quite efficient.

https://refundservices.business.cond...refunds/create

gilboman

that doesn't matter if it wasn't AC that initiated/caused the change in aircraft/airline/flight. if it wasn't AC who initiated the change, they won't refund you.

have you contacted the TA to confirm who initiated the equipment/airline change?

mcbg1

I don't see why that matters. I paid for seats which I didn't get to use and I should be refunded for them.

YEG USER

It matters a great deal. Seat selection fees are (typically) non-refundable, unless Air Canada initiates a change which causes you to lose them. You would have agreed to that when you purchased the seat by clicking on an "I agree" or similar button.

All we know is that you were initially booked on AC/AF flights, and that got changed to be all AF. The fact that you were dealing with Cheapoair complicates things. We don't know if AC initiated the change via flight cancellation, etc, or if for some reason Cheapoair did, etc. (for example if Cheapoair had you booked as some sort of tour - not that you were part of a tour - and then the group booking got changed to be all AF). AC's position could be that they didn't initiate the itinerary change, and thus deny you the refund. Sometimes purchasing cheap tickets via OTA's come with strings attached that are unanticipated.

I'm not sure that a chargeback would have been appropriate or successful in this situation (had you paid by cc).

PointWeasel

The airlines are tricky. And your common sense does not apply to all airlines.

In the case of AC specifically, their refunds services are usually fairly prompt with tickets, but with other fees such as preferred seats, etc things can get slower with a credit card refund. You used an AC Gift Card which complicates matters. How would you expect them to refund you? A cheque? A new AC Gift Card? Did you specify this in your request?

I am far from being an AC defender on FT, but I would resubmit the refund request with specific details on how you would like the refund processed.

gilboman

you won't get a refund if you (or your TA) initiated the change in equipment/carrier. much like you bought a hotel room but chose not to use it, you don't get a refund for that.

mcbg1

I didn't not initiate any changes