OrangeLeaf

One more data point, which is an update to a post I made on June 27. All it seems to illustrate is the wide variance in time to refund a Delta SkyMiles AMEX pay with miles ticket.

03 May phone call to request refund for June TATL flight cancelled by Delta. Advised it could take 30 business days.
27 June follow-up phone call led to immediate miles redeposit after Medallion line agent consulted with Refunds. Told that cash refund might take another month.
28 August follow up phone call led to Medallion agent and her supervisor escalating the case with Refunds and getting a commitment to process the cash refund in 7 days.
04 September email advising the refund had been processed.
06 September credit posted to AMEX.

Like @progapanda experienced, escalation to a supervisor seemed to do the trick. In my case the Medallion agent who triggered the escalation conveyed to me that both she and her supervisor were mystified at the length of time this was taking.

An odd feature of this process is that from mid-June until late-August I had an e-credit for the full (i.e. cash and miles) ticket value sitting in my wallet – even after the miles, representing about 70% of that total had been redeposited. An agent advised that after a system update in June e-credits were showing up for many people who had cash refunds in process and that the credit would eventually disappear when the refund was issued. It is when I saw that e-credit disappear I made the call that appeared to bring things to a resolution.

flyerCO

+1 for DL agents who are helpful.

MastaHanky

I canceled a ticket (SLC-BNE) right after Virgin Australia went into Administration. I submitted the cancellation and refund request on June 20th.

About a month later I noticed I had credits available to use, but no visibility into amounts - with instructions to call. I had no other contact from Delta at that point.

As it turns out, I had another trip I had to book, so I was able to call in and use those credits.

Today, 2.5 months after submitting my refund request, they finally acknowledged my request - and then said they couldn’t refund it because I had used the credit for a new booking. Admittedly, I had forgotten that I had even submitted a request for refund, so this was a bit amusing to me.

sluneckov

I have a EU-Hawaii ticket for travel in December, bought on March 14th. What if the US border remains closed for EU citizens until then? Am I eligible for cash refund?

Adam1222

You will not be eligible for a cash refund unless the flight is canceled.

woodenshoe101

Data point:
- refund requested May 22 (Int'l cash+voucher paid ticket)
- refund processed email 9/11 (Cash back to CC, voucher to be reinstated via separate email)

- Refunds requested May 15. x3 on same PNR (Int'l cash + voucher paid, but included an up-fare and then a routing change and ticket re-issue).... still waiting....

FWIW, I ended up sending a comment/complaint to DOT about these refund delays after calling and contacting Twitter and getting absolutely nowhere. I'm sure nothing will come of it, but wanted it on the record as DL is clearly deliberately slow rolling by choosing not to assign more processing power. Ever since I've started flying DL, to me these refund delays have been by far their biggest service failure.

Edited to add: the other 3 refunds are also now processed, but are incomplete. In all the exchanges and reroutes, the upfares got lost. I have all the dated receipts, so will follow up with the agent to reprocess the almost $3k in upfares as a refund also.

flyerCO

Prior to CV19 DL was at top of the game for refunds, even when not required. It's part of reason AF/KL wanted to takeover their NA call operations. They felt DL was letting money out to loosely.

progapanda

You can also hope for an at least 90-minute schedule change (since you were ticketed in March), which would allow you to get a refund in a couple of months.

sluneckov

there obviously was some change to my itinerary because I was able to cancel and get refund confirmation within 10 minutes using the Delta chat. I’m not much of Delta flyer, bought this one just because it was error fare so I don’t check this thread closely. How long are the refunds taking? American always sent me my $$ within a week

Adam1222

If you review the posts in this thread, you will see three to four months is standard. Few airlines are processing refunds as quickly as they did pre-pandemic.

sethb

Wasn't that changed to 120 minutes? Or does that only apply to tickets purchased after it was changed?

progapanda

Domestic tickets issued after Jul 30 will be refunded only in cases where the schedule change is 120 minutes or more. Tickets issued before that and international tickets issued before August 17 retain the original terms allowing refunds for lesser schedule changes.

GRG

Data Point:
-refund requested on May 9th (CC & DL GC)
-still pending as of today (Sept 13th).

Messaged DL this morning to inquire and was told that due to a gift card being involved my request has to go to a "specifically trained refund specialist" and the rep could not or would not give me an ETA on when to expect it to be processed.

cmd320

Sounds about par for the course. Well done DL.

Travelomania

See my DP from September 8th:
(FWIW, I'm a DL Diamond and 2MMiler)