A reader who asked to remain anonymous shared a frustrating story with me, which can perhaps act as a warning to other travelers, as this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of something like this happening.
Avianca extorts Lifemiles member over dispute?
I’m avoiding sharing some specific details, since the traveler is worried the airline will try to take action again. Long story short, this person redeemed Avianca Lifemiles for a roundtrip ticket, for travel on Avianca.
The outbound went off without a hitch, but on the day of the return flight, he received an email that his flight schedule had been changed involuntarily, to another flight that didn’t work for his schedule (since he had a separate connecting flight from there). Avianca had no acceptable alternatives, so he ended up booking a new ticket on another airline.
So he then called Avianca, but got nowhere — he claims he collectively spent eight hours (!!!) on the phone, getting transferred from person to person, but no one could resolve his issue. He was looking for a return of half of his miles (for the direction in which he couldn’t fly with Avianca), plus half of the taxes back (which amounted to around $45).
Given his lack of success getting help directly from the airline, he decided to file a credit card dispute for the taxes for the return portion of the ticket, which hadn’t been refunded (which hardly makes him whole).
Then a week later, he received an email from Avianca that “had extortion tones,” telling him that if he didn’t cancel his credit card dispute within 12 hours, they would block access to his Lifemiles account indefinitely. Given that he still had a sizable balance of miles with the program, he decided to cancel the dispute.
They finally granted him access to his account again two days later, after he shared a screenshot of the credit card dispute having been canceled.
The reader asks if I have any suggestions, or what I would have done differently. He says that in retrospect, perhaps he should have booked the ticket as two one-way reservations instead of a roundtrip (but he hardly did anything wrong there).
My take on this frustrating Avianca Lifemiles situation
What an incredibly frustrating situation. Unfortunately this isn’t the first time that I’ve heard of an airline threatening a member’s loyalty program account over a credit card dispute. After all, when airlines are frustrated with customers, it’s sort of the biggest leverage they have.
It’s kind of wild, but airlines own our miles & points, so even if you spend thousands of dollars buying miles, the airline can take those away at will, basically for any reason it wants. Now, you could of course try to litigate that, but at least that’s what the terms state.
What this traveler was asking for — a pro-rated refund based on a flight being canceled — is completely reasonable. However, it’s one of those areas where airline customer service can fall apart, and seemingly no one is empowered to actually make a situation right and find a solution.
Customers are just rendered completely powerless. There’s only so far you can escalate these situations, and if you’ve spent hours on the phone trying to find a solution, what other choice do you have other than to file a credit card dispute (which doesn’t even get you your miles back, but instead, gets you your taxes back)?
I can totally see how this happened, of course. The department at the airline responsible for credit card disputes probably sees the dispute and doesn’t understand the backstory of what happened. No company likes to have a credit card dispute filed against them, so they responded by threatening the person in the only way they could.
What would I have done differently? In all honesty, I’m not sure there’s all that much else that could’ve been done. He’s a lot more patient than I would’ve been, as I would’ve likely just cut my losses many hours earlier.
When you reach a dead end like this, you typically have two options — find a senior executive’s email address, or reach out to someone in the media, in hopes of that getting the airline to solve the issue. He has done one of those things, so I’d say he’s doing what he can! If the flight were touching the United States, I’d recommend filing a complaint with the Department of Transportation (DOT), but that doesn’t apply here.
Bottom line
A traveler who redeemed Lifemiles for an Avianca ticket had his return flight canceled, and the schedule no longer worked for him, so he ended up booking a ticket on another airline. He then spent hours on the phone trying to get the return portion of his trip refunded, only to get nowhere. So he then filed a credit card dispute for the taxes for the return portion, and the airline responded by… threatening to ban his Lifemiles account.
It shouldn’t be this hard to get a solution to an issue, but unfortunately, it’s all too common with airlines. That’s also why I think it’s important to bring visibility to these issues. I guess he’s still better off than the Emirates first class passenger who was banned from the airline for legitimately disputing a credit card charge (the airline ended up making matters right, and even compensating him, as they should).
What do you make of this Avianca credit card dispute situation?
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