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Waiting for a travel refund from an airline, cruise line or other travel provider?

We too are members of that club, so we know how annoying it is to wait for your money! We thought we might ease your frustration a bit, and give you some insight into what causes these delays:

Cancelled Flights

Unfortunately, you’re not alone.  We are told that over 4,000,000 flights worldwide were cancelled as a result of COVID-19. That means that up to 590 million passengers might be waiting for a refund or ticket changes. To compare: in the USA, most travel companies use 9/11 as the previous “worst case scenario”, and up to now, 14 times more flights were cancelled due to COVID-19!

It will come as no surprise that processing such a huge volume of refunds, credits and changes takes time.  In fact, the airlines’ queue of refunds is so long that some airlines have even temporarily inhibited the usual system to process refunds, in order to allow them to handle their transactions.

Working from home

In addition, like most of us nowadays, many call center and accounting employees are working from home. That has an impact on refunds too, Cruise line and tour operator call centers have all the technology available to process credit card refunds securely in their office. But not every home-based employee has access to the same infrastructure. In some cases, companies have to regularly send a small number of accounting employees to their offices to process refunds. That too results in a delay.

And finally, after a travel provider processes a refund in its accounting systems, they need to pass it to their credit card company, who then turn it over to your card company.

So, how long does it take?

How long does all of that take? Well, in some cases it can be just a few weeks, but we’re told that some refunds may take up to 60 or 90 days in this unusual time.