Getting our Australia tickets refunded
In early January we bought tickets for an April trip to Australia through American Express Travel. With all of the Covid-19 lockdowns around the globe, it slowly became clear our trip wasn't going to happen. Given that half the planet was trying to call in and cancel or move their trips, I decided to wait until about a week before my trip was scheduled to begin.
Amex's phone lines were an absolute mess. I waited over an hour only to be disconnected. Twice. I tried using their web chat client and the people staffing it weren't allowed to do any kind of booking-related changes. I was starting to get nervous because Qatar was still operating a few of its flights but I knew Australia had closed its borders. I was afraid that if Qatar didn't actually cancel the flight, I'd be on the hook for it and not get my money back.
At some point I noticed that my email confirmation had an entirely different phone number to call than the website. I'd been calling 1-800-297-2977, but in the PDF confirmation in my email it told me to call 1-800-443-7672. Apparently it was telling me to use this number because I'd used one of their Platinum Travel Counselors to book my trip. (Quick sidenote: the only reason I'd done that is because their website kept erroring out on the final step of booking through the web interface).
When I called that number I immediately got through to an agent. She canceled my tickets and told me the refund would take about 10 weeks. It took 10 days. I have no idea if that line had vastly shorter queues throughout the entirety of March, but I'm grateful I didn't have to spend a third hour on hold again.
Amex's phone lines were an absolute mess. I waited over an hour only to be disconnected. Twice. I tried using their web chat client and the people staffing it weren't allowed to do any kind of booking-related changes. I was starting to get nervous because Qatar was still operating a few of its flights but I knew Australia had closed its borders. I was afraid that if Qatar didn't actually cancel the flight, I'd be on the hook for it and not get my money back.
At some point I noticed that my email confirmation had an entirely different phone number to call than the website. I'd been calling 1-800-297-2977, but in the PDF confirmation in my email it told me to call 1-800-443-7672. Apparently it was telling me to use this number because I'd used one of their Platinum Travel Counselors to book my trip. (Quick sidenote: the only reason I'd done that is because their website kept erroring out on the final step of booking through the web interface).
When I called that number I immediately got through to an agent. She canceled my tickets and told me the refund would take about 10 weeks. It took 10 days. I have no idea if that line had vastly shorter queues throughout the entirety of March, but I'm grateful I didn't have to spend a third hour on hold again.
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