Update to insurance refund
 

Hope everyone is well, and for Aussies here, I hope you aren’t to despondent about when we will be able to travel again. Today we received a partial refund from our unexpected return to Australia in March. We had top cover, and cancel for any reason. Of course we dint have cover for a pandemic.
The one way airfares from Paris to Sydney was over €4,000 and close to Aussie $9.000. As a one off, the company has refunded us $3,100. Better than nothing.
keep safe and happy

Oh, Cheska, that’s still quite a loss.

I remember when my parents were caught up in Tiananmen Square protests and their insurance fully covered the change of routing and new flights and some other policy holders found theirs termed it differently (civil unrest or something) in order to deny any insurance cover. You don’t know until you claim.

Cheska, I hope you'll consider that refund as the down payment on your next trip. You do have a plan for next time, right? Most likely you two will get back to France before we will and your trip report will be my consolation. In the meantime, stay healthy and happy.

That is interesting. My cousins were also and picked up bullet casings as they said no one would believe what they witnessed.

I think the money we lost on this is nothing compares to others. Still waiting for refunds but for the vouchers we received, I might mail to my friends in London to use. We don't see any light at the end of this dark tunnel. Fl is a mess.

Good news that you got mostly reimbursed.

I just completed an exhausting 6mo process with a travel insurance co to cover a medical emergency & associated travel for a family member who fell ill on a cruise. Thankfully they are doing well. In the end the travel insurance co paid out what was due so out of pocket expenses were relatively minor, but the travel insurance co sure didn't make it easy. I think they want you to just give up and walk away.

I think we need a thread devoted entirely to insurance companies & our experiences with each.

I could write a book, or at least an entire chapter...

They certainly did make it complex to apply. Luckily we keep everything, so it made it easier to make the claim.
J62 it would be more stressful making a claim for illness. Hope the family member is well and truly on the mend.

Coqueilot it certainly is for the next trip. Aussie international Borders are still closed and will remain until September 17, and it is expected that they will remain closed until the end of 2020. Qantas are saying they expect international travel to begin in July 2021.

Well, you know that Australians are welcome in the EU as of today. Unfortunately, I don't think there has been a direct link between Australia and France since the disappearance of UTA.

Hope everyone is well and coping during the difficult time.

We have some positive news regarding our refund from Singapore Airlines. As we booked and paid for our tickets in 2018, there were a lot of conversations with the company as to our flights being covered by the covoid policy. We were lucky in the last week to get a person who went thru every email we had sent the airline since September 2018.
The airline advised us on Thursday that we would receive a $4,000 refund for the return leg Paris to Sydney ( premium economy) . Really happy with that result, and will definitely go towards the next trip.
PS International Borders tipped to open on January 1

Great news, Cheska!

I still haven’t received my refund from Qatar....

Sorry to hear that. Singapore Air had not responded to us since May. I then posted on their FB page and it was all done and dusted in two days. Perhaps you might try that avenue

cheska, good news! You two deserve to be the first to go back to France. Will you just pick up your trip where it was interrupted?

Coquelicot we will pick up some of it as we will go for three months. We didn’t plan to go to Provence, however the little we saw of it we loved it. So the plan will be 1week in Loire Valley, 6 weeks in Provence, and 3 weeks in Northern France. A must do for us is the Australian Remberance trail. We will use the full 90 days at this stage. Things change though.

Sadly we have not been able to get back in our house yet, due to the legalities of renting, and it has been really tough renting a 30sq m studio around the corner. Hopefully we should be in our house in two weeks. At the moment the thought of leaving our house again is too hard, and maybe by 2022 we will think yes let’s go for six months.

Great news cheska, hopefully you’ll get to go back to France in the not too distant future. I was just telling DH a couple of days back we needed to spend a couple of months in Provence. Maybe a month in Sarrians near Carpentras, we spent a fortnight there in 2018 and vowed to return. And another near Uzès, with a third month in the Languedoc maybe. My dream vacation, fingers crossed it comes to pass...

cheska15, I'm so happy for you that you managed to recoup some of your expenses. It's never nice to be out of pocket, on top of having to cut a holiday short. Where did you hear that Australia's international borders may open on 1st January? I certainly hope that's not the case if vaccines are not readily and widely available. We're in Melbourne and have hardly left the house since early March. Although I would LOVE to be able to travel (anywhere outside of my suburb, quite frankly), I don't want it all to be for nothing if they open the borders prematurely. I'm sure there will be pressure to do so though.

dreamon thanks for your kind words. It is terrible what you are going thru at the moment and I would like you to know we are thinking about you all, and really hope that the numbers go down soon.
Josh Frydenberg said a few weeks ago that he hoped for a January 1 opening of the international borders. However, that was before the situation deteriorated in Melb. Probably won’t happen now I expect. I’m not in a hurry for the international borders to open either. I honestly can’t see us travelling until 2022. Meanwhile I am going to redo my garden including some ideas I have picked up in France. I have just watched Monty Don’s French garden series, and loved it. Sadly I can’t buy the whole street to have my own Versailles.
Keep Healthy and Happy.

Thanks for the good wishes, cheska15. I too am thinking 2022 (hopefully!) and would love to go for as long as possible.

That is good news Cheska. I was wondering if you were back in your house. We are apparently in the queue for a refund of our airfares from Lufthansa. So we will see. We are travelling in western Queensland in our camper trailer at the moment . 30 degrees today and lovely. Saw some stunning scenery today so not all bad. Just do not know when we will get to see our children and grandchildren in Canberra and Sydney. And as for seeing France again. Hopefully 2022. We are not getting any younger.
Thinking of you in Victoria, Dreamon.

We have received two apologies for the delay in receiving our refunds from Iceland Air, round trip, DEN to KEF, Saga Class. Getting impatient.

No refund from Virgin or email except that they will still be flying with bankruptcy and to rest assured it is safe to book.

“Getting impatient.”....me, too.

An email from Qatar about 3 months ago with my refund request number and asking not to contact them, as refunds could take up to 8 weeks.

So, I messaged for an update given it was heading to 12 weeks with no contact from their end. They had all my details, booking reference numbers, passport numbers, contact details, etc. but basically asked for it all again over the last week and my message from them today is “as your request for refund is already generated, please allow more time.. we will get back to you soon...”

Jeez, when I think that I used to be in charge of refunds for an airline operating in Paris. I made most of the refunds within a week. Ah, but the pre-covid times are gone... :p

Finally a response from Singapore Airlines after our flight from Melbourne to Milan was cancelled in May...
After getting an email in March telling us a refund was being processed, we had not heard anymore from them, rang on Saturday and actually got answered, all I had to quote was our booking reference number,I was told we would have confirmation of our refund by "this day" sure enough by 8pm we had an email confirmation of our refund and our points returned to our account, hopeful now a refund is coming, considering we paid for premium economy seats in October last year it has been a long wait!!! I'm not sure we would ever have had our request answered if I had not rang them,
Will let you know if refund actually hits our credit card account but I am more hopeful now.
Good luck to everyone out there with a similar problem.
Hopefully we can get to visit out lovely Italy again before we get too old!!!!!

Many airlines will go bust, go into US bankruptcy, or seek new sources of cash. I'd get what ever I can as soon as. Of course Ryanair will just ignore EU regulations as per normal.

Late here, @cheska, hope you get into your home soon. Glad you managed to get something from the airlines. United was very good about our refund, but it is different as they could not even fulfill their contract. I hope you enjoy finishing your next stay in 2022. I keep wonder if it will be two years between my trips (last was Nov 2019)

vino2 hope the money is in your bank by now.

kerouac the days that you talk about processing quick refunds are sadly long gone. Many years ago airlines in Australia even had compassionate airfares if you had to return home quickly. Admittedly that was 1999, when we had to return to Adelaide as my father in law was in intensive care. I remember we rang Qantas at 2.00 am and my husband was able to get on the 6.00 am flight. They also made sure he was first of the plane. Not sure that it would happen now.

gooster we too think 2022 is when we will travel again.

Adelaidean Any news yet ?

Quite a surprise. I spoke to an Air France representative Thursday after being on the phone for only 10 minutes. I cancelled my flight, applied for a full refund, received a confirmation number and got word today (Sunday) that my refund would be applied within two weeks.

"France's government announced €15 billion (around $22.7 billion Cdn) in rescue money for the pandemic-battered aerospace industry, in hopes of saving its hundreds of thousands of jobs and keeping plane maker Airbus and national airline Air France globally competitive" Jun 20

Air France has a wealthy parent.

Cheska, “Adelaidean Any news yet ?”

No... wish they would define ‘soon’.

Air France was great. We got that refund within two weeks. I am hoping our Eurostat voucher will be extended but not holding my breath. I have a 300+voucher for a Paris hotel. I am still hoping.

Great news, cheska, and everyone else who has their own money back in their hot little hands!

Air Canada is stubbornly refusing to offer anything but vouchers. At least they did away with the 24 month restriction, but that’s cold comfort if for some unforeseen reason we can’t travel in the future.

sugarmaple it must be very frustrating. I too think vouchers are worthless.
My neighbour who is in her 70’s had a very big trip planned to italy and France, including a boat cruise all booked through a well known travel agent, and they are offering her $23,000 worth of vouchers. That includes airfares. Unfortunately she can’t take up the fight with the each individual provider because the travel agent did all the bookings. Sadly all this money was paid in November 2019.
My neighbour is not confident that she will be able to travel again. She even asked if the vouchers could be part of her estate, and was told they are non transferable. Absolutely disgraceful. Hope you get a resolution soon.

Just an update to my last post, Singapore airlines did indeed refund our airfare as promised in 2 days not 6 to 8 weeks,
I feel very lucky that we have come out of this cancelled trip as well as we have, a tour provider in Puglia refunded our deposit upon recieving our email saying we would not be travelling even though we did not request a refund, so too did our accomodation in Ostuni,if we are lucky enough to travel to Italy again,{we are both over 70 and the long trip over is daunting} those 2 providers will be our first bookings.
We have vouchers from trenitalia and a hotel in Lake Garda for future use. Easyjet refunded 2 flights and we are just waiting on refund for a return Milan to Santorini flight with them,
A booking in Greece that we could not contact was paid out by our credit card insurance(not a chargeback) who were just amazing to deal with.
Still feel for everyone in the tourism business and are grateful for how we have come out of it all,
Good luck to everyone and hope the world recovers from this.

vino2 good to hear your news. I too really feel for those business people who have lost their livelihoods. While nobody likes to lose money, those in the industry have lost much more. I’m sure the financial assistance given by governments is only helping a little if at all.
I really hope that the world recovers, however with second waves occurring in most places, it may be a very long time.

cheska, $23,000! That really is disgraceful! Does that even make sense that none of it is eligible for a cash refund? I feel for your neighbour.

Anyone who books through an agent always runs this sort of risk. While a travel agent makes everything more simple, it prevents the customer from contacting the service providers (airlines, hotels, etc.) directly. At my airline, I had to tell unhappy customers constantly that I could not refund them directly, because it was the agency which had collected their money. If the agency was screwing them over, their only recourse was the consumer protection agency and not my airline.

We had an interesting case.

My wife had been talking about an Israel tour for several years. We had never been on a tour since we plan our own trips. However I just didn't have it in me to do this one.

So we booked a tour thru Gate 1.
Since the trip was not all that long I felt we should add something else since we were purchasing Business Class airline tickets with Delta.
I wanted a stop some where that we could get to Israel easily and in a short amount of time.
Belgium worked out so we booked that.
From Belgium to Israel I booked one-way tickets on Brussels Airlines. I wanted preferential tickets and paid extra (quite a bit) for them. I didn't realize it at the time but they were fully refundable tickets.

So, enter Covid.

The first thing I did was tell my wife I expected the trip to be a total loss..
Once Gate 1 officially cancelled our tour they first offered vouchers but gave refunds if requested. That was quite fast.

At first Delta tried to convince people to take vouchers. Then they insisted flights were not cancelled but you could cancel with a voucher for some quite short time. So it became a game of chicken. Take their voucher or take a chance your flight would take place without you on it.

Eventually Delta did the right thing. I have to give them credit that once they adjusted to reality we received a refund on our credit card within a few days. Again, I have slammed Delta for other things but I have to give them credit for this.

Our hotels in Belgium and any airport hotels were all booked with 24 hour notice. So cancelled and we never paid.

So that leaves us with our only fully refundable air fare on Brussels Airlines. I have never seen a web site program to have you go in circles and not get off as much as theirs. I called and the message said go to the web site. And on and on.

So eventually I replied that I wanted to book a flight. Boy did they answer fast. They started to say refunds will be given after August 31, 2020. I called last week just to see if they are answering the phone. Of course, I said I wand to book a flight so I got somebody. At least one person is still there.

I was told they will start to send refunds withing a few weeks.

So, after August 31 means any time after that. Start in a few weeks means about the same thing. Well, we're only down to about the last $600-$700 which is a lot better than I thought at the start of this.

And that is for our fully refundable tickets.

Oh, and to make it a bit amusing. I wrote a letter to one of the Belgian government offices and ask for their help. Eventually I go a reply that basically said, they fine companies for not adhering to the law. However, I am free to hire a lawyer and sue the company.

.

I had a flight booked to San Francisco on AC for June. AC said I could only have a voucher so I disputed the charge with American Express and got a credit on my account from Amex.
Would have done the same for our Italy trip next month but my husband said he was fine with a voucher instead of disputing the charge with his card company. We did get full refunds from the two hotels we had paid for already.

Rcg, I had thought hard about disputing the charge, but in the meantime my travel CC eliminated their annual points awarded on the card, so I cashed out and the card will be cancelled soon. It would be a gamble to keep the card, pay the annual fee and get nothing back. Of course if they got me a refund, it would be worth the annual feel. There’s a consumer rights guy who is making a lot of noise about AC’s policy, maybe he’ll make some headway.