DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: I booked three nonrefundable airline tickets for my wife and me on United Airlines to fly from Orlando to Rome. United resold the middle seat between us on three of the five flights. I asked for a refund, but United is telling me that I can’t get my money back, since I purchased nonrefundable tickets.
But how can they resell the seats I paid for? I’ve sent emails to the executive contacts for United on your website, but United won’t even give me a travel credit.
Can you help me get the $660 back I spent for the extra seat?
— Leigh Roberts, Winter Garden, Florida
ANSWER: United Airlines should have kept the middle seat (that you paid for) empty. United offers the option of buying an extra seat for the same price as your original ticket, if you need more room. This obligates United to keep the seat empty; it can’t resell the seat halfway through the flight.
Your case brings up a long-standing grievance among air travelers. When you have a nonrefundable ticket and can’t make your flight, your airline can resell the ticket, collecting money for the same seat twice. This strikes many air travelers as unfair. In the past, lawmakers have suggested legislating this unfairness and mandating that an airline should refund a nonrefundable ticket if it can resell the seat. But so far, nothing has passed.
You were smart to escalate this to the executives at United. But I would have kept going. I list multiple executives on the site, and you could have been more persistent. Also, you might have considered a credit card dispute. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you can file a charge-back for items that you paid for but didn’t receive, such as an airline seat.
So, what went wrong with your ticket? I checked with United, and it said that for some reason, the boarding pass for your extra seat wasn’t scanned when you boarded your first flight. You told me that you reached out to United the day before your flight when you had a problem checking in, and the agent instructed you to deselect the extra seat when you checked in.
“The reservation was marked as a no-show by our team in Orlando, who ended up canceling the advance seating assignments,” the representative said. “That made the extra seat available for reassignment.”
United should have seen the problem when you reached out to the airline, then to its executives. Instead, it kept turning you down. But after the airline reviewed your case, it decided to change its answer:
“We’ve processed a refund for the extra ticket that was purchased,” the representative told me.
Lesson learned: If you buy an extra seat, always scan the boarding pass for the extra seat. All airlines — not just United — will cancel the rest of your reservation, if you miss one leg of your flight. In fact, this could have turned out much worse. United could have canceled all of the tickets on your reservation, which might have left you stranded during your stopovers in Rome or Frankfurt, Germany.
Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at elliottadvocacy.org/help/.
(c) 2024 Christopher Elliott
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