Of course AI finally emailed back and replied on twitter, both times saying to call them...when I told them all of their numbers do not work.

Their numbers do work. The US numbers get forwarded to the call centre in India. I think they are overwhelmed with people calling in. So keep trying. if you can call the European and Indian numbers as well and try at different times of the day.

i had a number of reservations that ai didn't allow me to cancel earlier this week so i was forced to change the dates....now ai is offering refunds for the same reservations....i'm going to try calling back to see if they would offer refunds for those changed reservations now but i'm not hopeful of a positive outcome....

update on my earlier post....

called ai & asked them what my options were....i was informed that ai is not offering any refunds because its not their fault that the flights were cancelled....the government has ordered flights to be stopped so ai cannot be held responsible....:rolleyes:

But its the passenger's fault that the same govt. has asked them to stop non-essential flying.

And there is a good chance of not only getting COVID-19 on such flights but also transmitting it far and wide and trying not to do that on the pax's part means AI should penalize them.

trying to explain that to them is like banging your head repeatedly against a wall....in fact, the head banging might be the preferred option here....

Explaining that to call center agents is pretty pointless. They neither have any understanding of issues nor are granted any flexibility in dealing with customers. It's Ashwani Lohani and Ronojoy Dutta and that their gang that are the villains and aholes of this.

6E took it a step further when they started sending emails encouraging people to book Flexi fares now so that we're not impacted by change fees later. Real aholes.

What US numbers are you calling? The ones on the website and that they gave me on Twitter simply give me a "Verizon Wireless, this number is disconnected" message.

No... what US number are you calling!!! :) It's a toll free number... VZW doesn't come into the picture at all.

You need to call 1888 634 1407 (Customer Support - Air India). The number works just fine.

Keep in mind, today is a national lockdown day in India. So there will be minimal agents in the call centers meaning much much longer wait times.

That's the number I've been calling. Turns out, since you said it redirects to an India call center, you have to call in the middle of the night, when they're at work in India. SMH. I guess during the day for me it goes to some disconnected line with Verizon giving a warning. But of course, it's a long hold tonight.

After all that, I could have bought the flights new for the same price...and I have to rebuy seats again. What an absolute, BS crapshow AI is right now.

To add data points - I had 4 flights booked on vistara in March.. i decided to wait till last minute to see how things play out.. with the flights being grounded, I called them and asked for a full refund.. they refused, saying only change is possible, cancellation will mean cancellation fee.. i decided to wait it out further.. thankfully, a little later, my flights were auto rescheduled by Vistara, giving me the flexibility of getting a full refund.. which is what i opted for, rather than pushing my tickets to some uncertain date in future..

Now.. Im just wondering, not sure if this has been discussed before - if the airline is cancelling or rescheduling the flight, for any reason, shouldn't they also refund the payment processing fee ? The credit card company is not charging it to us, the airline is. and then if they cancel the flight, the consumer is out of pocket for the payment processing fee, for no fault of his..

anyone ever pursued this and got the processing fee back ?

i got the refunds minus the processing fee....they refused to budge on this saying that the fee is non-refundable....

I have a lot of free time these days.. im thinking of complaining to the nodal officer and then escalate from their onwards.. just wanted to see if anyone has already tried (with Vistara or otherwise) and what was the result..

go for it....the nodal officer would have the same amount of free time as well so it may be the best time to complain....:D