Refund Difficulties
 

I am having serious issues with Continental. First, a flight did not post and when I contacted CO, they said I was a no show. I finally managed to get the issue resolved after going back and forth with CO.

Now, I cannot get a refund on full fare (Y) ticket I purchased, but ended up not using for travel on August 5. Continental tells me I used it. What's going on? I ended up flying Aug. 4 on WN.

I now have to pay a fee to get a ticket usage report. Should I just contest the charge with my CC?

get your CC in on it
 

I would get in touch with your CC company to see what they can do for you. I've had similar trouble with CO this year and they seem to be less than helpful, it took the added muscle of the CC company (in my case Amex) to get it sorted out.

Then at least you know what your options are, even if you decide to try to work out directly with CO.

Good luck!

I would certainly dispute the charge on your credit card. I am surprised that Continental has created these problems--I have found CO to be very efficient with respect to crediting miles and refunding Y fares. FWIW, I think that you have been unlucky!! CO will be able to find out if you didn't use your ticket. Did you get the number of the ticket? You may see it on your cc statement; that will help.

Not to pile on CO but I've found them to be less and less helpful the higher my Elite status gets. Now as a Platinum I long for the days when I got real help with billing and lost mileage issues at Silver.

totally favorable
 

My related experiences have been totally favorable. Sometimes it took 45 minutes in the phone to sort it out, but difficulties were always resolved satisfactorily.

I do keep ALL my boarding passes. In these days of E-tickets, it seems like a waste of time, but sometimes they help to get omitted flight credits, or prove standbys did clear.

I refunded a Y ticket last week.

another Refund Difficulty: no process to re-credit the gift account
 

When I called in to request a refund on a CO ticket a few months back the gal I spoke with was reading all the boilerplate about change fees and I pointed out that the fare was refundable and she was stymied: "Oh, we don't actually sell many of those so I'm not that used to seeing them" !!! :p Also somewhat related to the thread title "Refund Difficulties" here's one: one of the refundable tickets was purchased after joining the CO Travel Club which gives a small credit of $5 for every ticket purchased at continental.com: "Club members will receive $5 in their continental.com Gift Account after travel has been completed.". You can apply the gift account balance to a ticket but there's no process to re-credit the gift account amount back to the gift account if the ticket is refunded. Instead a paper coupon is generated and mailed to the address on file. I have a paper coupon for $10 which I can apply to my next ticket purchase. BUT, there's a catch with that if you use the Chase CO MasterCard to purchase the tickets to earn the 5% discount: you can only apply ONE discount or coupon to a ticket (according to the person I spoke with). Since 5% is always better than $10 it seems the paper coupon is stuck in a never-to-be-redeemed never-never land. :(