IAN-UK

I've had to cancel airline tickets with airlines only rarely, and (touch wood) it's always gone in a straightforward way. A bit of a wait, but I finally got back broadly what I expected. That was with Thai and Qatar.

I tackled through the jargon rules in portuguese attached to my TP ticket and expected to pay EUR115 penalty, getting the rest of the ticket price back. I spoke to an agent, she confirmed what i thought, but said here'd be a further chunk to pay if i cancelled by phone, but not if i did it online: fair enough.

THEN she said there'd be an extra lump of the YQ and some other element not refunded. She had no idea how much: somewhere between 0% and 100%. Helpful

But she assured me the refund department would know. Sadly i could only contact them by email. She gave me the address. No reply after two weeks. But this is TAP.

So back on the phone again. This time the nerw agent thinks the penalty is in each direction, so 2 x EUR115. Plus the unknown extras. Suggests I email the refunds department again.

Yes, it's TAP, so expectations for customer service are as low as can be. But is this any way to run a commercial organisation?

Has anyone any experience of the process ?

Andriyko

ricktoronto

I book all tickets always refundable and usually full fare, through a human travel agent and the TA issues the refunds in 24 hours. It's a big firm and they offset other funds owed to the airline from what the airline owes me that day. So what I pay $40 for an e-ticket. There's a non airline employee human at the end of the day and a 24/7 emergency number.

IAN-UK

oops! duplicate

IAN-UK

OK, I heard back from refunds, but in the form of the geeky Portuguese version of the conditions attached to the ticket. Helpful.

The scary thing is the ticket is broken down into its four component flights, MAN LIS, LIS SFO, SFO LIS and LIS MAN. Under each component it lists a cancellation fee of EUR115. So that'll be EUR460 penalty?

I phoned the help team again, this time selecting the Portuguese option in the hope of greater clarity.

They assure me that the cancellation penalty applies to the trip in each direction, rather than to each flight. Say the per flight reference in the conditions is "just the way it is written".

The agent puts forward the option of cancelling the return journey for just EUR115, and receiving a refund of half the round-trip ticket i've paid for This interests me, but she goes on to advise me I should do the cancellation only after I've completed the outward journey to SFO, "to avoid complications". I lose interest.

All very TAP. And though the option of turning the ticket into cheap one-way is attractive, I have about as much confidence in TAP as I do in our future prime minister.


I've had a long history with TAP. They holed our relationship below the waterline on a trip to Sao Tome last year; after the lounge access debacle, the withdrawal of hotel accommodation in Lisbon when demanded by their schedule and this latest farce, I've stopping baling the water out.

dmitriy55

Hi - does anyone have the e-mail address to contact the refunds team at TAP? The one that I got on the phone from the agent ([email protected]) does not see to be working. Thanks in advance!

af fp

Not very straightforward but it seems the best way is to do it online: "contact us" - > "complaints" (I know, not logical) -> motif "refund"

If you have already submitted a refund request you should receive a response from "Talk to Us", at least I got one within two weeks. Then you can reply to this address ([email protected]).

It seems to have worked for me, after some back and forth for them to check supporting information they sent me an e-mail promising a refund (although the e-mail does not say how much and one week later I do not see any refund on my card). Once you have a refund reference, ROR...., you can check its status at Reembolsos, I could only get this to work on the portuguese side and even after I received my ROR number it did not show very useful information ("O seu reembolso encontra-se efetuado, por favor contacte o seu banco ou a entidade emitente do seu cartão de credito para confirmar a data de pagamento. " or "the refund has been processed, contact your bank or credit card company for further information", nothing about amount or a confirmation number).

dmitriy55

Thank you for the information. I just e-mailed them, let's see how fast they respond.

In terms of trying to search with my ROR number online, it does not seem to work for me on either the English or the Portuguese website. The original refund request was submitted back in mid-December. What I'm thinking is, if there is no response from them this week, would it be logical to just file a charge-back with my credit card?

On TAP's end, the phone representative told me that the refund was approved, and they directed disbursement back onto my card back in Dec, but looks like the actual transfer never took place.

af fp

Very interesting, please keep us posted here, because I seem to be in the exact same situation, just a month later. I have seen refunds taking 4-6 weeks (e.g. with BA).

dmitriy55

Will do!

stephem

This is the real problem with these great business class fares. I had 4 tickets in August that I had to abruptly cancel and it took a day to get to the bottom of the fare rules. Admittedly I had not even read these carefully, but for my discount J fare they were definitely a per component cancellation fee. So we had LON-OPO-LIS-JFK and were told it would be the feex3. We also were told that the YQ is not refundable. In the end we wound up rebooking for April 2020, we were able to get LHR-LIS-SFO for about the same price, minus a change fee (only per direction, not per component). In then end it was such a hassle that AMEX (who I booked original flights through) gave me a credit to cover the change fee, so it was close to nothing forthe change.

But for refunds, I am now considering these cheap tickets essentially non-refundable.

tff

For the cancellations I have made myself, usually in discount fares, I have used the cancellation option in the manage reservation tab in TP's website. I have opted for a refund in voucher and it normally takes no more than a couple of days. The amount reimbursed is usually around 50% of the total paid.

dmitriy55

Yeah, that's basically how I look at it. Often, the "change fees" amount to essentially the price of another ticket, and the refund for low fares is, at best, the amount of taxes paid.

loopflyer

I have a discounted TAP J ticket one-way LIS-JFK that is fully refundable, cancellation at any time. I will need to cancel - the trip is still 2 months away. I believe it states that because it's a discounted ticket (was one of their Spring20 fares that discounted the higher refundable J fares) has to call though to cancel this. It was booked in U.S. dollars on the TAP U.S. website. Will they charge a fee for calling instead of doing it online (which it says you can't). Any advice? Reading over the posts I'm leery about getting pulled under the rug by TAP. I have all the receipts, emails from the ticketing which states the fare rules, but again does TAP do anything honestly? Thank you in advance.

IAN-UK

I don't think they set out to be dishonest. It's just that interpretation and implementation of the fare rules can throw up some interesting results, not always to the benefit of the passenger....

I can't believe they'd charge for an agent to cancel the ticket if its not possible to do the cancellation online. But this is TAP.

Why not call them and ask ??? That way you get a definitive answer. Well, near definitive (it's TAP ).