I paid twice for my airline tickets

Expensive Journey TROUBLESHOOTER: Final calendar year, I paid out $1,284 for two tickets from San Francisco to Barcelona, Spain. The day prior to our flight, I tried out to print our boarding passes. I could not.

We went to the airport three hrs early. Even nevertheless I supplied the airline’s agent with the verified itinerary, they couldn’t locate it. To get on our flight, we compensated one more $1,973. It took practically a few hours to get us reticketed, and we nearly skipped our flight.

Amount Airlines won’t refund the $1,973 because it suggests we have been a “no show” for the flight. How can we possibly be a no-show if we had been on the flight? Furthermore, we paid two times for the flight.

I called my credit score card business and a representative suggested that I dispute the first buy. I did, but my credit card sided with the airline. Can you assist me get my $1,973 back?

— Ellen Boelens, Redwood Metropolis, Calif.

Remedy: Level Airways, a price reduction airline operate by Iberia, should have had a document of your flight. You obtained your tickets through its web page and tried using to validate your reservations on line a working day in advance of your departure. You also arrived at the airport early to check out to type issues out. In its place, Amount marked you as a “no-show” and then offered you new seats at a $689 markup. That’s mistaken.

You could have found a significantly less highly-priced fare on an additional airline, but I think it was wise to rebook on Level Airways. That way, the airline realized for particular that you compensated for your tickets twice. You really have been on your originally scheduled flight, so you couldn’t have possibly been a “no-clearly show.”

Although your flight took put prior to the pandemic, you tried out to take care of it all through the pandemic — and that was the problem. Degree Airways, like every single other airline in the planet, was overrun with refund requests. Yours was a person of hundreds of hundreds of them.

As I reviewed your paper trail — great position on holding that, by the way! — I noticed no evidence that you ended up a “no-present.” This was just an digital glitch that Amount Airlines pinned on you. And it appeared all way too satisfied to let you spend for your ticket twice. That is how airways make their dollars these times. Ridiculous.