Often1

That is a very good question and yet another reason not to let things drag on.

No idea where OP is located or for that matter where his card issuer is located.

In the US it is 60 days from the date of the statement first showing the item. But, most major card issuers voluntarily permit chargeback disputes for up to a year. However, given that US law only requires 60 days, there is no reason if I faced an issue that I would let it go past 55 days (to give myself a cushion). OP's situation may be different, but it is yet another reason to act speedily.

danam

Following the intervention of one of the LH lurkers I was contacted by someone from customer services. They were dealing with the refund according to the fare rules (as suspected).

The good news is that I have now received the full refund.

Thanks everyone for the advice, hopefully things will go a little more smoothly in the future! I will be sure to obtain more documentation of a flight cancellation at the airport in the future (though it has never been needed before).

mozilla

Thanks for the update.

Glad you are able to solve it directly with LH without having to involve your CC issuer, especially since it was nothing more than a misunderstanding.

mmff

I don't understand why you keep stressing that the customer ought to waste time going back and forth with incompetent agents using dysfunctional IT systems.

You should contact them once and request, politely but firmly, that they acknowledge the amount of the refund and tell when you can expect the (credit) transaction to post. If they fail to do so, it is not up you, the costumer, to spend time working on it. You should initiate a chargeback and move on. That's what the credit card yearly fee is for.

danam

The situation was explained to them in every email and phone call I made, it certainly shouldn't have been this difficult and I doubt I would spend 3 months chasing a refund again. Certainly on the phone they could never understand why I wasn't refunded in full already, but this understanding doesn't achieve getting the refund, which is dealt with in isolation by a department that doesn't ever send you any feedback about what it is doing or why.

I know we all have varying experiences with every company, airlines I like are hated by others due to a single bad experience. I fly LH/LX approximately 10 times a year for the last few years with only a couple of those being long haul, so I'm not remotely important as a customer. But these experiences do affect our judgement when making future choices.

mozilla

Because we don't know for sure what transpired during the initial refund request at the airport. OP gave his side of the story, but there are some red flags that indicate there was already a miscommunication from that very moment. Could be due to the agent not realizing the flight was canceled, could be due to OP saying something which caused the agent to assume it was voluntary (not blaming OP - we all know how it goes in hectic IRROPS situations), but in the end, there was a miscommunication.

Once that was cleared up, the full refund was issued.

We also can only speculate what would have happened if OP did a chargeback. I know for a fact that the EU isn't the USA when it comes to chargebacks, with EU consumers getting the short straw. LH could have defended itself, showing proof that OP voluntarily canceled his non-ref ticket at the airport and LH refunded the taxes, which could get OP dinged for fraud/filing frivolous chargebacks. If that were the case, OP's situation would have become 100 times more precarious.

The only thing we know for sure is that LH did what it had to do as soon as it was clear what the situation was all about. Sure, it would have been preferable if everything went quicker. But as we're dealing with a German mega-corp here, patience is essential.

danam

I can certainly confirm that the ticket agent at the airport was well aware that the flight was cancelled due to a technical issue with the aircraft. She even stated that she was adding comments to the booking that the initial flight was cancelled for this reason and that was why I had decided to cancel the entire itinerary. She clearly stated that LH was my point of call for a refund, not LX and I didn't expect that this would be a problem. I will ask to get a print of this the next time it happens.

There were maybe 150 people there getting rebookings, cancellations, reroutings from the same flight. I don't imagine many were refunds and probably most were LX booked anyway so didn't have the LH ticketing as I did.

Fabo.sk made an interesting point in one of the early posts regarding Article 5 of EC261/2004, about the operating carrier being responsible for the refund, but LH have not stated that this is a cause for not processing the refund.

To me it simply looks like the LH back office team have not taken into account the content of the booking, the telephone agents were able to read any comments and agree that a full refund is due (though maybe they just like to be sympathetic to people on the phone). The breakdown then occurs when it gets to the back office, they possibly see the first refund of "taxes - fee" that was incorrectly processed back in early November and assume the work is done already. This is why I came here to look for a contact, because it's not possible to call the refund team directly and they certainly weren't contacting me. Thankfully the LH Lurkers were able to communicate with somebody, but of course it shouldn't be necessary. All theoretical of course, I don't know why they made such a drama of it.

Incidentally, I contacted my credit card issuer, they asked for any correspondence that I had with LH. I provided this and they were satisfied that a chargeback had a chance of success, providing the form to complete. I held off for a couple of weeks further and thankfully it wasn't needed in the end.

mozilla

Thanks for the extensive feedback. As you'll understand, for an outsider it wouldn't be fair to judge against LH, as we don't know LH's view on the issue and cause of miscommunication. Not that it really matters anymore at this point.

However, I do want to thank you for keeping us up to date and providing details and periodical feedback as requested. It's not often that we get to hear the end of the story, especially when the customer gets rightfully compensated. This topic will be useful for others in a similar situation in the future, and it definitely deserves our appreciation ^

mmff

It is perfectly fair for us to say that this was handled very poorly by LH. Customers such as the OP should not have to repeat themselves to multiple agents until someone actually understands the issue and is empowered enough to solve it.

The burden of clarifying the matter in a timely way is on the company who receives the request for a refund, not the customer. If the company does not solve the issue in a reasonable timeline, the chargeback is the logical avenue to explore. It is not, as you suggested upthread, even remotely unethical or imoral to do so.