Refundable, fully flexible tickets - but with penalties / fees
 

I was looking for a fully refundable fare on AA for a trip from DFE-SYD and thought that was I purchased on the website by selecting the refundable option. I even called the agent after I purchased to confirm . When I had to cancel my trip I find out there's a $600 fee .. grrr !!

Am I wrong in thinking this is deceptive ?

Not really deceptive, since the fare rules do state that there is a cancellation penalty

Fares which are refundable subject to cancellation penalties are pretty common

Was this a business/first class fare since $600 seems high for AA's economy fares

Haha. I would say that the fare is not fully refundable if you don't get the full amount refunded. Its deceptive.

Except that the website does not say fully refundable , only refundable

Fares which are refundable minus a penalty are very common

If searching for flights, there are columns when searching on lowest fare of

Main Cabin
Premium Economy
Business
First

If switching to the "refundable" tab , the options are
Main Cabin
Main Canin Fully Flexible
Business Flexible
First Flexible

The Main cabin fully flexible is indeed refundable with no penalty

<removed personal remark>

I think any reasonable person would expect a "Refundable" fare to be, well, Refundable. No gimmicks, no fees, no 'gotchas'. Refundable should be a simple term.

Except, of course, it's not. A refund can be available in full or in part, and this isn't just an airline industry phenomenon.

That said, AA could do more to clearly disclose which fares are which.

If you are advocating that "AA could do more to clearly disclose which fares are which" then I thinks its great you are agreeing that they are being deceptive.

Deceptive means "likely to make someone believe something that is not true." :D

It would be less confusing if these fares were labeled as partially refundable. Many people think refundable means fully refundable.

If this is what I think it is, a J seat on the QF code-share DFW-SYD, the first disclosure for the ticket is:

CANCELLATIONS ANY TIME CHARGE USD 600.00 FOR CANCEL/REFUND.

There are tons of refundable/flexible fare buckets which carry penalties.

That said, if OP asked about the penalty and was told there was none, he should send a short note to AA noting the date and approximate time of his call. AA may have a "recording" of the call and, if it does and the agent misstated the rules, as a customer service matter, AA will generally honor the agent's error.

On a $10,100 ticket, I would never rely on anything other than a close reading. Making a dummy online booking for random dates, finding the above disclosure took <1 minute before entering personal details.

You need to read the Fare Rules. Period.

Though admittedly AA makes the fare rules hard to find, but it is already better than UA which requires you to go thru Catchy in order to read the fare rules!

This. I always check them, ESPECIALLY on international itineraries. If you're buying from AA.com though, they're not that hard to find - and definitely available before clicking the purchase button.

Most international C/F fares that aren't booked as J, D, or F, often have cancellation and change penalties in the $400-$600 neighborhood. Fully refundable are available, but you're going to pay thru the nose for them.

I use these fares quite a bit as my company will buy them if they're cheaper than coach (about the only time they'll consider it), or I buy up to them from a Y fare out of my own pocket. The $500 or so risk to me is worth it considering my flight will be much more comfortable.

UA offers these fares as well, but they call them flexible rather than refundable to denote that there may be penalties associated with changes and refunds.

More on this topic from this thread:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...are-rules.html

And on a related note (non-refundable vs. non-changeable):
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...al-ticket.html
I think there was another one that got fairly contentious on that topic as well.

The common theme is that you have to read the fine print because AA's disclosures on the fare rules are, at best, lacking.

THis is the route, and it was listed as Business Flexible. I did call the agent after I booked to confirm it was fully refundable, they called the ticketing department and re-confirmed with me. The fare rules are confusing to read and I did not see this language in there.

What more could I have done, I've written to customer service and they're response was too bad. Do you think AA could find the voice recording of my call ?

Sunil

So when I go on aa.com and look for RT flights between PHL and ORD, I can go under the "Lowest Fare" tab and see flight after flight for $255. There are two subsidiary tabs, "Main Cabin" and "First". When I click on "Main Cabin", the following info appears:

Now I go back to the top tab and switch to "Refundable". There are now three subsidiary tabs: "Main Cabin Flexible", "Main Cabin Fully Flexible", and "First Flexible". They price out at, respectively, $725, $1835, and $985. Let's ignore the fact that "First Flexible" is little more than half the price of "Main Cabin Fully Flexible". (Hey, if puritanical corporations are dead-set against lower rung employees enjoying any of the pleasure of First Class, far be it from me to criticize American Airlines for profiting from this righteousness.) Instead, let's click on "Main Cabin Flexible". We see:

No, I did not just re-paste from the same copy cache. I have checked and double-checked: The front matter provided by American on their $255 "Main Cabin" ticket and their $725 "Main Cabin Flexible" ticket is the same.

I give. Why would you ever prefer a "Main Cabin Flexible" to a "Main Cabin" ticket? (No points for saying "to trick employer into subsidizing status by racking up more EQDs.") I know, I know ... read the fine print somewhere else. But in search of what?

You should call and talk to them, escalate to a supervisor if need be. I once had a situation where I was materially misled by a phone agent, I explained what I had been told, when I'd called before, etc., and it was all fixed up while I waited on hold for a while.

(My situation was that I had booked a roundtrip ticket and called to pay the difference to upgrade my outbound flight to F, I paid the difference -- but it turned out that the agent replaced my roundtrip with a ticket for only a one-way outbound in F, even though my online reservation appeared to remain intact. I traveled outbound but was unable to check in for the return and was told I'd changed & canceled it and the return would now be $600 or whatnot, and they fixed it all up. Now, my small part of contributory negligence, perhaps analogous to yours in failing to read the fare rules, was that when I paid the difference in fare, I [though I had no real way to know] paid only the difference between my purchased rt Y ticket and a one-way F, removing the cost of the return Y leg, which was not too much at the time it was bought, but which was still something. But that didn't matter -- AA made it right.)

Good luck.

If as noted in post #9, the BOLDED text really appeared, then OP was remiss in not seeing it; but if that text did NOT appear, then AA shouldn't fault the OP for not reading (in some cases 3 pages of difficult to fathom) "fare rules".

I am pretty sure every browser has a "find" function. I know Chrome does. It really saves time as you can enter the terms "PENALTY, CANCEL, REFUND" on the fare rules page to figure out the rules that are bound to your ticket in a minute or so.

Although it says that there is a change fee , looking at the penalties section of the detailed fare rules, it does state for the $725 fare

Why should the "average" flyer know that they should even search for those "words". [We FTers know better:)] When I logon to aa.com and complete a booking, there is NO warning that I should read the fare rules--admittedly AA does require that I check a box at the end, but every piece of software requires that one check the EULA box..does anyone read the full EULA?

I get your argument, for most reading is hard but ignorance is not bliss. Even though someone doesn't care to read the terms theyre still bound to them, just ask all those folks that took out interest only, adjustable, and other alt-a notes in the mid 2000s.

DataPlumber, Dave Noble, I appreciate the points you are making and especially appreciate your attention to detail. I did eventually make my way to the dense text you reference, although even as someone who is constantly on aa.com, I found it darned hard to find. But leave that aside: Even without using a find function, I did come across the text that suggests that you can cancel the tickets without paying a penalty. Yet there is so much else there. I could not convince myself that I was reading it in the right context (all the repetition with slight distinctions). And how to weigh what I am reading against the simpler text hovering on the site linking ticket changes to additional fees?

I spend more time than is healthy buying plane tickets, trying to figure out the best strategy for doing so, etc. Yet I am still shaking my head at the counter-counter-intuitiveness of all this. At the end of the day, am I now to understand that a refundable ticket really is refundable, in the common understanding of the term?

A refundable ticket may be
fully refundable or
refundable with a cancellation penalty

How much the penalty is (if any), will depend on what is stated in the fare rules

For AA fares, if it simply states in penalties "CHANGES/CANCELLATIONS CHANGES/CANCELLATIONS PERMITTED. " then there is no charge for making changes nor penalties for cancellations

Further up in the thread can be seen a sample text where there is a cancellation penalty "CANCELLATIONS ANY TIME CHARGE USD 600.00 FOR CANCEL/REFUND." - there will then be a separate entry for penalties ( if any ) for making changes

The biggest problem is most lay persons automatically assume a refundable ticket means they get FULL refund of a ticket. It is NOT the case, all depends on the all important fare rules.

My quick and dirty approach is to scan any NUMERIC value in the dense text, as if there is any penalty and fee, they must be specified the amount - hence you would see the NUMERIC VALUE of the fee. If no such numeric value to be found, then suffice to say, the ticket is refundable without penalty.

I think that the biggest problem is that people do not want to pay for services of those that can explain the situation to them ( such as travel agents or airline sales agents ) but then will not make sure that what they are purchasing is what they want

OP did call AA to confirm the refundability of his ticket, which is why he was annoyed when he had to pay $600. Why should one assume that a travel agent would have given him better info?

From post#1: "I even called the agent after I purchased to confirm"

What question was asked though? Unfortunately people sometimes word their questions as badly as airlines word their rules...

"Can my fully refundable fare be refunded without any charges"

(As already pointed out ..MANY read "refundable" as "FULLY refundable"......let THAT flow over into the question and you've got problems.....)

This kind of thing is really frustrating and in my opinion, is highly deceptive and at some point, some attorney general should step in and put an end to it. Ask 100 people what the word "refundable" means and 99 will say that it means that you get all of your money back. That is the common understanding of "refundable" across the economy. If something is not fully refundable, it should clearly state that it is "partially refundable". Everyone would understand that. Right now, AA and other airlines are trying to deceive the vast majority of customers.

It is even confusing for long term flyers. I recently bought a TPAC J "refundable" ticket. Before I bought, I knew to look at the fare rules for both the outbound and return since they were booked into different fare buckets. It took forever to sort through and I finally ended up calling CK to get some questions answered regarding inconsistencies in the language within each fare bucket rules and across both fare buckets regarding if there was a penalty both ways and how much it was. CK rep could not answer the questions. He put me on hold for over 10 minutes while he tracked down others who might help. When he finally came back, he had an answer that may or may not be right. He admitted that the fare rules were confusing and inconsistent and the answer he got was the best he could do.

Someone who is not a hard core flyer would never be able to get through all of that - or know where to look and who to call. All AA has to do is clearly state that the fare is partially refundable on the main reservations page and state the penalty amount. Everyone would understand that. Anything less is deceptive as far as I am concerned.

+1 ^

These fares really boil down to, "it never used to be this complex". But, that is not an excuse. The ever-more segmented market does mean that you either read the fare rules or you take the risk that there is something in there you won't like. Simply put, there is no such thing as "fine print".

Refundable fares which carry a penalty are nothing new in Europe, but until recently, were fairly uncommon in the US. These fares respond to market demand from businesses which pass costs on to clients and can find it very hard to handle the accounting for non-cash credits of the type typically used by US carriers on non-refundable fares. There are a lot of businesses which find it a great deal easier to purchase a refundable ticket with a $300 penalty than a non-refundable ticket with a $200 penalty because accounting for the stored value of the credit is hard.

As to the phone agent who reportedly misstated the fare rules, that has nothing to do with the fare rules and is simply a matter of competence. It happens every day in every industry.

There is one simple answer. The COC make it abundantly clear, not only on AA, that no employee has the authority to vary the COC. Thus, the fare rules are what they say they are. It does not matter what the phone agent says.

But, as a matter of customer service, if the question was properly framed and the answer was clearly given, as a matter of customer service, AA ought to grant an exception and treat the fare as refundable on a one-time basis.

AA does randomly record calls. But, it does not retain them for any appreciable length of time. Nor do line employees have access to them. That includes anybody you can reach on the phone even if they say they are a supervisor. In a dispute, make a written request via webform ASAP and provide the date and approximate time.

All the more reason for AA (and other airlines) to make it clear (not hidden away in 3 pages of tightly written RULES), that such fares have important caveats re refundability.

Agreed, I don't think the average person should need to read through hundreds of lines of fare rule gibberish to determine the fees involved. The airlines should be presenting this clearly in the booking process.

If we want to be pedantic about it, technically every ticket is refundable, subject to a cancellation fee that is less than or equal to the original fare paid.

Not sure how this is deceptive. The price each of the ticket is fully disclosed. Just because you choose not to read the terms doesn't mean that the airline is being deceptive. Just because you buy a car and the dealer says well take it back and issue you a refund, doesn't mean they were deceptive when the contract says you only have five days to do so, or that there'll be a fee charged for mileage driven.

Some car dealer saying they will refund and AA clearly stating in writing that the ticket is refundable are two entirely different things. Both are deceptive but AA is more-so since most people will not believe anything a car salesman says (and know not to trust anything said orally) but would believe the plain meaning of something clearly stated in writing on the reservation page by a company like AA. There is zero reason for AA to be so obtuse about this other than trying to extract a few hundred dollars from casual travelers who do not realize that AA cannot be trusted when they clearly state the terms of the ticket in plain English, but then modify that clear language in pages of gibberish that are both hard to find and even harder to wade through.

I do not question that the partially refundable, refundable ticket has its place as pointed out in other posts. But AA should make clear that it is only partially refundable on the reservation page and not lead anyone to believe that they can get all of their money back, which is afterall, the common definition of refundable. Just add the word "partially" and be clear about it. Otherwise, AA is being deceptive.

You're the one making up the term partial refund. The entire amount is refundable, however there is a service charge for cancelling. Lots of places charge a service charge when issuing a refund. Try returning an open computer to the store. You'll get the full amount refunded, but then they add on a service charge. Thus the amount credited to your card is less then what you paid. Doesn't mean that you didn't get a refund of the original price.

Actually, it does mean you did not get a refund of your entire purchase price. You pay 100 and you get 85 back. The restocking fee is subtracted from the refund amount. The same way the AA fee is subtracted from the refund that hits your credit card. No reason to complicate it.

Restocking fees for computers and TVs are normally clearly stated in electronics stores, on their receipts, and their web sites - along with return deadlines. If AA would do the same on its reservations page, I would have no issue. I tried to keep it simple by adding just one word, but adding the phrase "less a $500 service fee" would be fine too. Just saying refundable when it is not fully refundable, is being deceptive.

It is not deceptive. Period.

The FT conventional wisdom is that the carrier should have somehow made whatever is at issue more clear than it was.

You don't need to read pages of fare rules unless you care about limits on open jaws and odd-ball stop-over issues. All the average passenger needs to check are the change fees and perhaps co-terminals if it matters.

If it isn't important enough to be bothered, that's fine. But, you can't then complain that it used to be one way or TWA used to do it another. Or, I guess you can. But, it won't do much good.

Um, no. Real nonrefundable tickets are not refundable. You can't get your money back. You. An use the remaining value, sure but that's absolutely not the same thing as a refund.

Agreed. This is why there is a DOT complaint path, and then a small claims court if one feels they've been agrieved. I don't know if that would be successful, but it might be worth a try. Let AA try to defend their definition of refundable and their fine print.

With a non refundable ticket you may - or may not - depending on the fare rules, be able to use the value for another journey. In many cases, the best that can be done is get the taxes reimbursed

Come on, this should be indefensible. I don't know if AA is necessarily worse than other carriers, but this is deceptive by any reasonable standard.

I just tried a booking like the OP's. There is no indication anywhere in the check-out process that there is a 300 USD fee (or any fee at all) for refunds unless you click on the single Detailed Fare Rules link that is presented right before you pay and then drill down into them. It took me several minutes to find the fare rules, and I knew what I was looking for. There are also 11 other similarly sized links – 9 of which come before the fare rule link – that mention fees, refunds, price details, contracts of carriage, terms and conditions, etc. So if you don't know the exact phrase that you're looking for – and the average traveler doesn't – then you'd have to click on almost a dozen small links throughout the checkout process and look closely at the pages they link to before you could catch the cancellation fees.

And this is setting aside the fact that the fare rules themselves are opaque, both in terms of language and typesetting. I MEAN I HEAR IT IS GREAT INTERNET ETIQUETTE TO JUST TYPE IN LONG RUN ON SENTENCES IN ALL CAPS. WITH RANDOM PUNCTUATION INSERTED IN BIZARRE - PLACES BECAUSE PEOPLE REALLY LOVE THAT AND THEN THEY WILL READ YOUR POSTS VERY VERY CAREFULLY AND REALLY REALLY LOVE YOU I'M JUST SAYING.