Paul_traveller

Are awards tickets included in the free cancellation / change by July 31, if they also include a segment on another A* carrier?

nickohrn

I personally just tried to cancel an award ticket (MLE-SIN-LAX) within 24 hours and I was informed that, while there was no cancellation fee, the miles redeposit fee still applies. I went back and forth with the agent for about 40 minutes, most of it on hold while he consulted with another agent, and there was no convincing him that shouldn't be the case. I decided to just leave the award in place and possibly change it while the change waiver is in place.

Should I have pushed harder? Was I wrong to expect to be able to refund the miles for free within 24 hours? To be quite frank, I didn't even think about it as I always consider bookings touching the USA "risk-free" for the first 24 hours - in this case, I should have been more careful.

emcampbe

if this was a flight to/from USA then there should be no cost at all within 24 hours. These are hardcoded DOT regulations, which are a requirement for any flights to/from the USA, and need to be followed by any airline flying to USA.

If this was relatively recent, you could try and call back to have it refunded, and if they won’t do it, file a complaint with the DOT on their website. The complaint triggers a need for the carrier to follow up within a prescribed amount of time (I think 21 days) and the DOT publishes the amount of complaints by airline by month

nickohrn

Thank you - this was my understanding as well. I tried calling back but am now outside of the 24 hour window and they don't understand that I called previously. I've sent an email and will wait to hear back and, if it isn't to my satisfaction, I'll file a DOT complaint.

jagmeets

60 days.

Waiting to hear back from SQ on a different sorta issue…from an email chain with the DoT..”I will forward your complaint to the airline and ask the company to respond directly to you with a copy to us. Airlines are required to provide a substantive response to the complainant within 60 days.“

Separately, while the call center wait times have dropped, it took a DoT complain threat for them to process (within 24hr) a refund for a revenue booking with the MNL based agent (on the US line) insisting that I submit their online form..she even tried ‘anyway it will take 6 weeks for the bank to process’…

(which, the last time I tried beginning of the year, before travel really took off, went unresponded for a few weeks till I forwarded the acknowledgment to all ‘@singaporeair.com/.com.sg’ email ids I could conjure up).

That said, they were very decent on another cancellation I had to do last year. Waived the fee, even though, they did not have to (saver opened up on a flight I had an advantage booking on)..but again..well after the said flights.

nickohrn

I wanted to follow up on this. I emailed [email protected] explaining the problem clearly and, after a few weeks and a round of verification, the booking was appropriately cancelled and refunded and the miles were redeposited without a fee. I am happy with the resolution and have since used the miles for a different redemption.