Air France ripoff - Ask the Community

RE: Air France ripoff

1990_ — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 04:49:04 +0000

Wow, what a mess. DOT is useful for getting responses from the airlines, but often does not enforce much; credit card dispute will provide an immediate credit, but likely will be reversed when the airlines respond, so will need to appeal, sometimes multiple times, and still may not prevail; BBB is worthless.

What is your goal here? Get a full refund? A credit to use towards future flight?

RE: Air France ripoff

vmyev — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 01:43:52 +0000

@thekellyd I can’t imagine why anyone would buy a “changeable at no fee” ticket if they thought AF could pull this crap and charge whatever they want. I wouldn’t have and would have bought a refundable ticket. But I wonder if AF would have only refunded part of the ticket cost. Sleazy, fraudulent advertising.

RE: Air France ripoff

vmyev — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 01:32:20 +0000

@foulowl Yep, as a last resort, I filed a dispute with my CC company. Waiting for a reply, Not optimistic!

RE: Air France ripoff

isaacC — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 01:21:03 +0000

@foulowl yes i would try with your CC company...but be prepared to be clear on the process...

RE: Air France ripoff

isaacC — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 01:20:10 +0000

@thekellyd Agreed - they repriced it for a oneway from europe which is very much more expensive than a full RT. I suspect this is where the fare difference occured.

RE: Air France ripoff

FoulOwl — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:45:01 +0000

@vmyev

Oh wow,.. a whole new element to this has just came to light.

I can’t even imagine trying to understand, let alone advise you, on how a misunderstanding with an AI agent resulted in your cancellation.

This has reached a point where I have a hard time differentiating between user error and Air France error.

your credit card company is gonna be your best source for a resolution… just don’t expect to fly air france for quite a while if you dispute the charge.

RE: Air France ripoff

TheKellyD — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:50:35 +0000

@larryinnyc Not necessarily. I'm an advisor that deals with these types of scenarios on a daily basis. AF/KL are especially challenging when changing just a return. Sometimes they'll want to go back and apply historical pricing to the entire reservation (which doesn't make sense), and sometimes not. Even just making a simple change to a return (in the same inventory mind you), will increase the fare. I've had the OP's same scenario happen. Only solution is to cancel the entire booking, take the credit and rebook. I only book fully refundable fares on AF/KL due to their very stringent change polices. Anything non-refundable is booked using DL codeshare as it offers a lot more flexibility.

RE: Air France ripoff

LarryInNYC — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:42:27 +0000

@thekellyd I think you're right that the OP probably confused "no change fee" with the fare difference.But I don't follow your logic your logic on point #2. The full amount of the purchased fare should be applied to that listed fare for the itinerary you're changing to. *If* the new itinerary really was available for the exact same fare as the original purchase the change should have been free.

RE: Air France ripoff

vmyev — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:05:33 +0000

@cr Unfortunately the "agent" was an AI. A human agent might have told me there would be an additional charge of $1238 for a "no charge" change!

RE: Air France ripoff

CR — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:43:44 +0000

Seems to me that when you asked for a refund, the agent thought you wanted to cancel