How long are Etihad taking to process refunds? 15 weeks and counting.

[freebo]

We had to cancel my wives return business class flight to London due to illness, this was pre-Covid cancellations.

The booking was made with Aunt Betty (Flight Centre), we paid them a $600 cancellation fee and they said they needed to wait for Etihad to refund them before they could refund us, and that this would take around 12 weeks.

Its now been 15 weeks and AB are still saying they have not received the funds back from Etihad.

Does anyone have any experience of this, or suggestions? I suspect Etihad won't talk to us because it was booked via an agent (did so because they were cheaper, regretting that now).

We're owed about $5,500 which is not insignificant to us.

 

[Mattg]

I'm not sure about Etihad, but I would imagine 15 weeks is not entirely unusual at the moment.

What caught my attention from your post is that you paid a $600 cancellation fee to Aunt Betty. The ACCC deemed these fees to be illegal (in cases where the airline cancelled your flights) and all Flight Centre Travel Group businesses promised to refund these fees. You might want to chase Aunt Betty about that too!

There is some more discussion about that here: Flight Centre refunds for cancelled flights

 

[freebo]

Just to bump this its now 21 Weeks and no refund from Aunt Betty.

Also, apparently I can't do anything about the charge as my cancellation was not Covid related, it actually pre-dates Covid.