My Bali refund remained a flight of fancy

QOn Mar 31 2020 I was due to fly out to Bali with a friend for a two-week holiday. I had bought the tickets on Lastminute.com for £1,180. The itinerary took us to Amsterdam with British Airways and on to Bali via Jakarta with Garuda Indonesia. The flights were cancelled in late March by the airline due to the global lockdown.

Lastminute got in touch quickly and gave us the choice of a travel credit or a cash refund. Not realising the impact of Covid, I opted for a future travel voucher but I never received it.

When I realised things weren’t going back to normal anytime soon, I asked for a cash refund instead. Lastminute said it wasn’t possible for us to change our minds. However, in August Lastminute sent an email saying it had applied to Garuda for a refund. That was eight months ago and my refund status on its website remains stuck on “Finalising refund”. Can you help?

A

Sorting out refunds and travel credit vouchers for the many millions of cancelled flights is proving a huge headache for both airlines and flight brokers and plenty of customers have fallen through the cracks.

While flight bookings are processed electronically, refunds involve human interaction. Customer service teams simply can’t cope with the volumes involved. Refund claims for flight itineraries using multiple airlines are particularly difficult to resolve.

The “Finalising refund” stage you are at comes after “Refund confirmed”, which implies that Garuda Indonesia has agreed to refund the ticket. So why the delay in paying out?

I asked Lastminute to look into your case. It said the first refund application forms, one for each ticket, submitted to Garuda were rejected for some unknown reason. It said it had submitted a new request and was waiting for the airline’s authorisation, which makes a mockery of its refund status tool. Lastminute claimed Garuda would approve a cash refund and, when funds had been released by the airline, it would refund you. However, a few days later, Lastminute asked for your bank details and has now paid you back. It may have done this from its own cash reserves, as it is my understanding that Garuda is not giving refunds. Its website makes clear that refunds for cancelled flights are in the form of travel vouchers because the Indonesian government does not require airlines to issue refunds if a flight is not operated.

In future, I would recommend booking travel involving more than one airline through Trailfinders (trailfinders. com). You may pay a few pounds more for the ticket but you will speak to a trained sales agent and, should the flight be cancelled, you will be refunded from the company’s own cash reserves rather than having to wait for the airline to refund the agent – if it ever does.

Bali highs and lows: a trip to see the lush rice terraces of Ubud was not to be, after flights were cancelled because of the global lockdown