Answer : I’m sorry to hear about your brother-in-law, and glad he made it. Like other airlines, Amer

Question : I'm trying to help my sister get a refund on her daughter s non-refundable airline ticket. Her daughter went to Spain in January as an exchange student. hertz usa car rentals Her return was scheduled for May 29th.
When my sister, her husband and son went to Spain to visit her, my brother-in-law was rushed to the hospital. He had been hospitalized for over a week until he was stable enough to fly back to Boston. They weren t sure that he would survive, so my niece went home earlier than expected.
I looked at American's web page and it said there are exceptions to the non-refundable ticket. I thought this would apply to my sister's flight. When I called American Airlines I was told that it would cost $250 to exchange the ticket, but the ticket was only worth $87. The ticket was virtually hertz usa car rentals worthless.
Answer : I'm sorry to hear about your brother-in-law, and glad he made it. Like other airlines, American rarely makes exceptions to its nonrefundability rule. The only time it consistently does so, in my experience, is when a passenger dies.
Airlines say they offer "options" for travelers who want more flexibility, but they aren't practical. Your niece would have had to pay at least double for her ticket if she wanted the option of a refund. She could have always paid extra for a "boarding and flexibility" package," hertz usa car rentals which would have allowed her to make a change for $75, but as a student, she probably didn't have the budget to spring for that extra "perk."
So, to recap: American, like other airlines, makes it too expensive to buy a refundable fare and no one really thinks hertz usa car rentals they'll hertz usa car rentals have to make a change to their ticket, so its option was impractical. They'll only refund your niece's ticket if she dies. So what's a girl to do?
I'm glad you picked door number two. Your niece didn't have a case, at least as far as American's rules are concerned. Neither did I. All I could do is ask the airline to consider hertz usa car rentals making an exception to its refund policy.
I wouldn t say the refund policies are too inflexible, but cost prohibitive to the cause traveler. I m sure if she had spent the money for a refundable ticket, she wouldn t have had any problems getting the money back.
Chris, a request for some clarification here, as I m sure this is going to confuse a lot of people. I m struggling badly with the fact pattern whose ticket exactly wasn t used which is generating the need for a segment hertz usa car rentals to be refunded? The only thing I can get out of the OP s story is that the niece came back from school early but it would seem to me you d be talking about waiving a change fee in that case, and not refunding a part of a ticket. The whole $87 deal also makes no sense if we re talking about an unused segment from Spain to BOS. I m guessing she means a residual value of $87 after the $250 change fee, which means we re talking about a $337 refund in total (and boy, she got a heck of a deal on the ticket if that s the case).
Years ago when airlines were more flexible with there refund and change policies I worked for a company who, when I would book tickets for travel hertz usa car rentals they would have me purposely book (and pay for) extra flights hertz usa car rentals just in case plans changed or to get a better flight. Then when the itinerary was complete it was my job to call the airlines and ask for a refund, which back in the day they would. I knew of a lot of businesses that had this same practice. So I can see why some airlines have such strict refund policy s whether I think they are correct or not. I liked to look at a lot of refund or return situations like this, If I were to purchase a gallon of milk and not drink it, could I or should I be able to return it to the grocery store a month after it expired?
I m trying to help my sister get a refund hertz usa car rentals on her daughter s non-refundable hertz usa car rentals airline ticket. Ahhhhh! I am SO tired of hearing never mind; you know where I m going. Oh, well, at least we got a nine of I could really use the refund to pay medical bills out of the deal. :-)
I am glad that the airline made an exception, but I have to say I don t think they were obligated to do so. I wish there was less of a difference between the cost of a non-refundable ticket and a flexible ticket, but there isn t, and as long as consumers take the chance with non-refundables they are at the mercy of the airlines goodwill when emergencies arise.
There are a lot of things in this story I don t understand, from the international ticket segment that was under $300 to the why the mom isn t arguing with the airline for her daughter or why the daughter just isn t doing it.
Yes, I think that s the case: $87 remaining on the value of the ticket after the change fee. My question is: Why didn t they just pay the change fee and use that same ticket to come back earlier? If so, they d only be asking for the $250 in change fee back instead of a full refund on the unused portion of the ticket
or buy travel insurance. If you can t afford to lose the money that you ve invested in a trip, you should always hertz usa car rentals do this. Of course the airline policies are too inflexible, but if the airline gives her a refund, would this be fair to the people who purchased $1000 airline tickets and also purchased travel insurance? As to the loss of $87, you can t walk into the door of a hospital s ER for less than $87. Does it matter if her bill is $87 or $10,087?
It s not that policies are too inflexible it s that there are too many different kinds of tickets with different policies AND this is not adequately explained before selection/purchase on many airline and OTA sites.
Although some sites (often non-US airlines) show prices in nice columns labelled with the type of ticket and restrictions, many don t and these latter simply show the lowest price. Trying to find the, say, lowest refundable ticket is often a pain. Cannot blame all this on airline hertz usa car rentals greed, hertz usa car rentals however, as they are caught between too many flight options, too many pricing options, and the balance between showing low competitive prices and higher revenue hertz usa car rentals prices.
I, too, am tired of these I want a refund on my non-refundable ticket cases. If the niece had an expensive theater ticket she couldn hertz usa car rentals t use because she left early, would she expect a refund for that? And this sounds like it was an extremely cheap ticket in the first place. I don t buy travel insurance, and if I have to change my plans I expect hertz usa car rentals to eat anything non-refundable. When I broke my wrist in Switzerland and had to come home early, my medevac insurance got me home, and I just wrote off a couple of airline tickets. (I did get the tax back.)
Say what you mean and mean what you say. What part of nonrefundable does a ticket purchaser not understand? Paying the cheapest fare carries risk. Eliminate the risk, and the airline will derive hertz usa car rentals revenue elsewhere, such as raising all fares overall.
I wonder why the one with the nonrefundable ticket didn t just change flights using that original ticket? Was the fare difference + the change fee too much? If so, what airline would provide a last minute ticket at a low price? Seems any last minute hertz usa car rentals ticket would cost more than a change of the original ticket, but then we are talking AA. A last minute discount ticket purchased on the web might have been cheeper than what AA would have charged to change hertz usa car rentals the original return flight.
Still, the original ticket is NON refundable. hertz usa car rentals You play the game, you take your chances. Probably should have bought travel insurance. Guess I m glad AA bent the rules. Hope they will do it for me if I ever need them to.
I had alot of time to think about this kind of situation hertz usa car rentals when it took 13 hours to fly 2 hours from Bologna to London last Monday, we all did alot of chatting about flying today and how helpless a passenger feels when there s a problem it almost always costs you money to fix it. The cost difference between open and non-refundable tix is ridiculous; the change fees are flat-out gouging, If you can change your tix online up until 2 weeks before the flight, there s no cost to the airline and it should be free. An airline could be more flexible on nonref tix but it would require adding staff and increasing the prices of all tix. Lately I ve been buying trip insurance on non-ref hertz usa car rentals tix, it s a cheap price to pay for some flexibility.
We assume that the sister and her husband had travel and medical insurance and so were able to get treatment and to travel back to the US using that insurance protection. hertz usa car rentals Is that the case? The daughter, even though she may want to be back in the US if her father is seriously ill, is not the injured party here and no airline would normally refund that ticket or waive the fee to change. For the spouses of seriously ill persons, yes, but for other family members most unlikely.
Therefore, good for her, that Chris Elliott was able to get American to give a refund but frankly this was unanticipated incident and the non-refundable rules should apply, and the daughter should have paid the change hertz usa car rentals fee and flown back to be close to her father at the time her parents returned. Where are the limits, otherwise, to getting refunds for the non-refundable hertz usa car rentals tickets?
Also I wish to add. If you can afford to send your daughter to Spain for a couple hertz usa car rentals of months as an exchange student, and then have the rest of the family pay her as visit, they maybe you can afford to buy more medical and travel insurance. hertz usa car rentals But of course, there is always that sister-in-law in Vegas who knows how to play the advocate lottery :)
I m glad he recovered hertz usa car rentals and I m glad Chris was able to get the money back. However, I am suspicious of the choices made here. Having just been through a similar ticket change situation a few days ago, I changed the tickets and did not purchase new ones. I had to pay the change fee. I can understand how it is expensive, but I know about the change fees every time I buy a ticket. it is like buying anything there are risks. When you go away from home, there is the risk you will have to return early. Although I sympathize with the situation, the fact of the matter