Warning about LATAM flexible/refundable fares

[Mattg]

I recently booked a flight within South America on LATAM and chose the "Premium Economy" option, which allows fee-free changes (fare difference is still payable) or a full refund.

I booked this on the Australian version of the LATAM website. For some reason, when you do this, it processes your booking via the Peru office in USD.

As it turns out, I did need to change my booking to fly the day before. Trying to do this took longer than the entire trip with LATAM will take (and there are two flights).

I first tried to change my flight on the LATAM website. Premium Economy wasn't available on the new flights, but I was able to select new flights in Economy. I then entered my credit card details to pay the small fare difference, and got this page:



I tried again - same thing. I suspect it's because the LATAM website didn't like my Australian credit card.

It's a fully refundable fare, so I figured I'd just cancel it and make a new booking. There is an option to cancel for a refund on the LATAM manage booking page, but when I tried to do this it said I had to create a LATAM account. I tried doing this, but the webpage simply didn't work. You had to enter various information but the fields wouldn't load to allow you to do this.

At this point I gave up trying to do this online and called LATAM. After talking to someone for 40 minutes, they told me they couldn't process my payment from an international credit card and gave me another number to call.

Called that number, and the same thing happened. They transferred me to a different person.

The third person told me that it wasn't possible to downgrade from Premium Economy to Economy. No problem, I said, I'll cancel the booking for a refund. Oh, I need to speak to a different department to do that.

Eventually I got through to somebody in Peru who took my bank account details (not sure why this was needed when the refund is to my credit card), and after about an hour on the phone I got an email saying that my refund would be processed within 7 days. (On the phone, I was told it could be anything from 15 to 60 days, so we'll see.)

Moral of the story: Although LATAM may say you can change or cancel certain types of tickets for no fees, it's not with no hassle.

 

[one9]

I had a similar experience a bit over a year ago. Despite having a fully refundable fare and cancelling it and being told I would be getting a refund, it never came. I chased it up many times over a few months and they kept saying the refund would be made soon. I ended up having to do a chargeback with the bank and Latam represented the chargeback and it went back and forward for ages to pre-arbitration before I finally got the funds back. I would guess it’s improved since the US fined them $1 million last year for delaying refunds: https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...tement,flights canceled during the pandemic."

 

[SYD]

Partly why I used QF points…especially when the sector / dates I wanted were several ’00s dollars each.

But obviously not as flexible but decent availability even a few months out.