Note: if you arrived here first, you may want to read Part 1 below first.
First having two airline tickets on LOT going to two different cities, but both from Budapest with overlapping dates, one was cancelled by the credit card company or so I thought. Using Mint.com, yesterday there is a financial update in my e-mail. It shows my MasterCard has a new charge of $573.60. Funny, but that is the exact amount of the airline ticket that was supposed to be blocked. Another call to the credit card people, tell them this was to be blocked, but it came through anyway, what are they doing to me? Play the martyr role. This fee is over 1/2 of my monthly university salary.
Transfer to the dispute department. It seems that they did deny it once, but then 2 hours later the charge came through again, so they said "What the hell! Let's green light it this time."
Yak, yak, yak, with the dispute guy. Sorry, we have to send a form to the US address and then you will have until October 2nd to get it back to us before our misguided thinking believes you no longer have an issue. Wait. This has to go to the US where it has to be redirected to me in Europe? Can't you send it e-mail, fax, carrier pigeon? Nope, we don't have those capabilities. Just because we are a multi million dollar company doesn't mean we stay abreast with technology. Notice your card does not have the chip the European cards have? Look, I say, "I have a been a good customer for over ten years. I have never asked for one favor or caused any problems. There has never been a late payment and my credit limit is high enough to buy a small business. Can't you do something to make this process easier?" Guess the answer.
Now there is a charge on the MasterCard for a flight I don't want, one on the American Express card for a flight I do want and a credit card company working in the 19th century. Things like this torture me. I would rather have someone hold my head in a hive of bees rather than have financial difficulties.
This morning I Googled LOT Airlines looking through dozens of their websites until I found a UK number. Twenty minutes of waiting, I finally was able to speak to a live person. After explaining the situation, she put me on hold for 3 minutes, but returned to say that she cancelled the flight I did not want and we have the flight we do. There will be a charge of $50 for the cancellation so they will credit the $573.60, but charge the fees for the change. I thanked her, I praised her, I wished her prosperity for the rest of her life.
Next was to call the credit card company to tell them to forget the dispute; all is well. Miraculously, since my last call, the charge was taken off of my account. However, because I resolved it on my own, I have to call during business hours US EST from 8am-8pm to ask them to reinstate the fee for LOT to credit and give my permission for the cancellation fees to be applied.
From now on, we will think hard about traveling only within walking distances.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment