In my October 28th blog post I complained about Alaska Airlines cancelling the flight home from Honolulu. I had to make alternate flight arrangements for my wife and me. This is the story of trying to get a refund for the cancelled flight.
The flight was scheduled for October 12, and I received the cancellation notice by email the day before. With the cancellation notice there was a notice that I could file for a refund. A “button” was provided, which I clicked on. It went nowhere, so the start of this journey of frustration.
In my earlier post, I noted that Alaska is the parent company of Hawaiian Airlines. That was a mistake. Alaskan and Hawaiian have an agreement to merge but it will take several months to get regulatory approval and work out all the details.
In the meantime, the two airlines have a “code sharing” arrangement. This means that Alaska can and did sell me a ticket on a flight operated by Hawaiian. It also means that when some unsuspecting rube like me tries to get a refund from Alaska (who took my money), I have to get information from Hawaiian, because their two computer systems can not fully share information yet.
This left me in the middle as Alaska personnel told me to call Hawaiian and Hawaiian personnel told me to call Alaska. I tried a new Alaskan AI tool to provide information and mentioned in my chat the merger. The bot got what seemed like angry with me for being so stupid that I didn’t know the merger was pending, not final. The AI bot seemed to really have a bad attitude! ‘Tude from a bot! Snippy little bot!
After waiting two hours on the phone for “post-flight customer service,” I got an Alaska Airlines human who informed me that I needed to call Hawaiian, get the ticket numbers for the cancelled flight and then “call them back.” I asked her if she knew what “call them back” amounted to. She did but there was no other way.
I did get through to Hawaiian and after making my request, it took only one week to get the ticket numbers. Back to Alaska with the information. I waited for someone to pick up, and after waiting two hours and 48 minutes, Matt picked up. Matt has now processed everything, and I received an official looking document that says Alaska will process my refund. I got the credit to my account November 29th.
Is there a lesson in all of this? Yes! After my first whiny post, I had five separate readers email me back saying they had poor experiences with Alaska. All five recommended trying Delta Airlines, who, by all accounts, take better care of their customers.
I think I’ll give Delta a try.
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