My flight refund got lost in the ether

QIn January 2021 I booked a return flight to the Caucasus to join a guided tour in September (flying from Manchester to Baku, in Azerbaijan, and back from Tbilisi, Georgia) through Opodo. The tour was cancelled because of the pandemic and, in late August, Lufthansa then cancelled the flights.

I asked the airline for a refund but was told I had to apply through Opodo. All my emails went undelivered; phone numbers didn’t work or weren’t answered; on the chat line, my email address and booking reference weren’t recognised so I couldn’t ask a question.

On February 2 I emailed Lufthansa again. It sent me six emails showing that £929.18 had been processed back to the “original form of payment”, ie Opodo. But how can I get this refund if my booking isn’t recognised by Opodo?

– Janine Le Mire

AWhen Janine Le Mire showed me her paperwork, it was clear that Opodo had never applied for a refund because Lufthansa had only got round to processing it on February 2.

As airlines and agents normally work in monthly billing cycles, I suggested that we wait two months to see if the money appeared in her bank account.

A couple of months earlier, Janine had asked her bank, Tesco, for a chargeback on her original ticket. On February 8, the sum of £837 was deposited in her account. This was less than she had paid in total as Opodo hadn’t sent a receipt for a later date change on the ticket.

As Janine was under the impression that she would have to repay this sum to Tesco when Opodo finally refunded her, or have a black mark against her name, I contacted Opodo in May using its chat facility to request that it find a booking reference that worked with her Lufthansa passenger identification code. Opodo said it would send an email in 24 hours. This did not happen.

So I contacted the company as a journalist to ask for an investigation. Opodo said her refund had not been applied for due to “an isolated human error”. It added that it had sent the amount requested by Tesco on February 11. But Tesco never bothered to tell Janine, despite her asking, that the chargeback would not be reversed as Opodo had repaid the debt.

I’m afraid this lack of communication is increasingly prevalent as companies have been hollowed out by redundancies, systems are broken and agents are working in isolation. However, Opodo has now also agreed to repay Janine the balance of the refund sent to it by Lufthansa.

Ups and downs: a tour of the Caucasus was cancelled due to the pandemic – but our reader had issues getting her fare reimbursed