Q. Due to a technical glitch, I have ended up with a double booking (non-refundable tickets) for four passengers from New York to Lisbon. One of the passengers is an infant and does not have a seat booking.
I made the booking on July 19, which is the date of probably the largest IT outage in history. It took several unsuccessful attempts on different sites before a successful booking was made.
However, it was not until two days later that I discovered I had two bookings.
I have contacted both agents, and they simply state that the tickets are non-refundable and will not contact TAP to ask for any transfer, refund, credit or another option to help with this situation. They have not budged on this position despite several calls to their help desks.
TAP has been more helpful and provided the contact information for its help desk which supports agent sales. It has indicated that it should be willing to work with me, but the request must go through the help-desk process. (The airline) also provided me with its complaints process from its website, which I have used to complain about the situation. That complaint has been received but no response has been issued at this time.
I have investigated whether the credit card I used has travel insurance, and it does not. I am pursuing a payment block with the credit card company.
The ideal resolution: I would like TAP to cancel one of these tickets and refund the money, give a credit or allow a transfer of the tickets to someone else.
The value of these seats is $2,592.
What is your advice?
– Mark, New York
A. Because the situation is so unique, the answer is tricky, says David Slotnick, senior aviation business reporter at The Points Guy.
“My suggestion here would be for the writer to do exactly what they are doing, which is to pursue every reasonable channel until there’s a resolution,” Slotnick says.
The problem that can come with booking through third parties is that it is very hard to nail down exactly whether the travel agency or the airline is responsible when it comes to sales, changes and refunds.
Slotnick notes that these factors make the situation even more complicated: The Crowdstrike outage; the fact that it’s a foreign airline (although the fact that the flight touches the United States helps); and that the two transactions were made through different agencies along with the issue that Mark technically authorized both transactions.
Pursuing a claim with the credit card company is a solid option, and, depending on your card, may be successful if TAP is not helpful, Slotnick says.
One final avenue to try: File a complaint with the Department of Transportation.
Any airline that sells a flight to, from or within the United States must allow full refunds within 24 hours of purchase, and is subject to DOT regulation and enforcement by nature of touching the United States, even if it’s a foreign carrier, Slotnick says.
In addition, Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said his department is closely watching the airlines to make sure they comply with all of their obligations related to the IT outage.
