DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: I booked three non-refundable tickets on United Airlines for my wife and I to fly from Orlando to Rome. On three of the five flights, United resold the center seat between us. I asked for a refund, but United tells me I can't get my a reimbursement because I purchased non-refundable tickets.
But how can they resell the seats I paid for? I actually have sent emails to United's senior contacts in your website, but United won't even give me a travel credit.
Can you help me get back the $660 I spent on the additional seat?
ANSWER: United Airlines must have left the center seat (which you paid for) empty. United offers the choice to buy a further seat for a similar price as your original ticket when you need extra space. This obligates United to go away the seat empty; it cannot resell the seat halfway through the flight.
Her case brings to light a long-standing grievance amongst air travelers. If you’ve got a non-refundable ticket and may't make your flight, your airline can resell the ticket and charge you twice for a similar seat. Many air travelers find this unfair. In the past, lawmakers have proposed legislating this injustice and requiring an airline to refund a non-refundable ticket if it may possibly resell the seat. But thus far, none of this has happened.
You were smart to bring this as much as United executives. But I’d have gone further. I list several executives the positioningand you could possibly have been more persistent. You could even have considered a bank card dispute. The Fair Credit Billing Act lets you file a chargeback for items you paid for but didn't receive, like an airline seat.
So what went flawed together with your ticket? I checked with United they usually said that for some reason the boarding pass to your extra seat wasn't scanned whenever you boarded your first flight. They told me that you simply contacted United the day before your flight whenever you had an issue checking in and the agent instructed you to deselect the additional seat whenever you checked in.
“The reservation was marked as a no-show by our team in Orlando and the seat assignment was canceled,” the representative said. “This freed up the extra seat for reassignment.”
United must have recognized the issue whenever you contacted the airline after which its executives. Instead, they kept rejecting you. But after the airline reviewed your case, they decided to vary their response:
“We have processed a refund for the additional ticket purchased,” the representative told me.
Lesson learned: When you buy an additional seat, at all times scan the boarding pass for the additional seat. All airlines – not only United – will cancel the remainder of your reservation when you miss a part of your flight. In fact, this might have turned out much worse. United could have canceled all of the tickets in your reservation, stranding you during your layovers in Rome or Frankfurt, Germany.
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