Help! United Canceled Our Trip to Paris. Or Did It?

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Help! ******* Canceled Our Trip to Paris. Or Did It?

Dear Tripped Up,

Last Oct. 10, my wife, a friend and I arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport to fly to Paris on a trip we had originally planned for April but had to postpone. At the ******* Airlines check-in counter, agents told us our reservation had been canceled — by us! Even weirder, the same thing had happened three weeks earlier, when the airline sent us an email saying we had canceled our trip. That time, we called and insisted ******* reissue the reservation for the same price, which it did by giving us a travel voucher and instantly redeeming it. At the airport, though, we watched as supervisors got their supervisors involved, and we were eventually told that something about the voucher had raised questions about ******. We missed our flight and bought last-minute tickets for that evening’s 11 p.m. ******* flight to Paris. Then that flight was canceled, though this time for everyone. Given the day’s stress and frustration, we gave up on the trip, had dinner and went to the airport Marriott before heading home the next morning. We believe ******* owes us for the cost of the last-minute flight ($4,475), a portion of the earlier canceled flight ($3,099), the cost of our transportation, hotel and meals that day ($1,178) and the money we lost on nonrefundable plans in France ($2,007). Can you help? Connie, Towson, Md.

Dear Connie,

Have you ever tried to solve a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that someone put through a wood chipper? Me neither, but now I know how that might feel.

Still, I think I’ve got it — a trying tale not just of *******, but one of a

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search gone wrong, a badly timed shoulder injury, an accusation of ******, a miscalculated credit card chargeback, unwarranted credit and a New Jersey-based travel agency with a bone to pick and an owner who answers to the name of “Alec Baldwin.”

This specific loony sequence of events is unlikely to befall other travelers, but other loony sequences will, and there are lessons to be learned here — because every party involved shares some blame.

It’s easiest to explain chronologically, so let’s turn back the clock to January 2023, when you reserved your original April flight on what you thought was a phone call with *******. It wasn’t. Instead, a click you made on a

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ad led you to call a travel agency named The FareHub, which, you said, did nothing to disabuse you of the notion that you were speaking with *******. (I wrote about dubious travel websites earlier this month.) The FareHub issued your tickets via email, in a format generic enough you didn’t notice the difference.

Only in March, when a member of your party hurt her shoulder and you called (the real) ******* to postpone the trip did you discover The FareHub was involved. It was a ******* agent who explained that two of the January charges on your credit card statement, to “******* Air” and totaling $10,659, were not to ******* at all. (This might be a good time to remind everyone that we should all regularly examine our statements.)

The total was some $4,000 more than you thought it should be. But when you called back the number you now realized was The FareHub to question the charges, you said an agent hung up on you. You called ******* again and spoke to the ****** department, who suggested you contact Chase, your credit card issuer, to try to recover what you had lost.

This is the debacle’s inflection point. Following the ******* agent’s advice, you asked Chase for a chargeback on what you claimed were fraudulent charges and were refunded the full $10,659. But that wasn’t right: Even though The FareHub did perhaps overcharge you, the company did purchase you tickets.

The FareHub is a brand of a company named Viajar Solutions, which is based in New Jersey with a call center in India. The FareHub’s site describes itself as “a legitimate travel company that is based in USA.”

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are few, poor and reflect your experience almost precisely, and a

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spokesman told me that the site has been suspended for months from its

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Ads program for violating

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.

When I later contacted The FareHub, I was routed to Abhinav Rasgotra, who identified himself as the company director and insisted the full charges were correct. He also asked if I would refer to him in this story as “Alec Baldwin,” his nickname in the ******* States. I declined.

Chase would not comment on the record about this case, but typically credit card companies weigh evidence from both parties in deciding these requests; Mr. Rasgotra told me he would send me the evidence he sent to Chase, but has not. Regardless, given that you were still planning to take the trip, you should have requested only a partial chargeback, not the full amount. You say you later contacted Chase to say you had received too much.

When The FareHub saw the chargeback, representatives tried to contact you by phone in March and then sent an email suggesting they would take legal action. “As there is no response on the call,” it said, “we have forwarded this dispute case to our Legal Advisor Alec Baldwin.” You didn’t respond.

A ******* spokeswoman, Erin Jankowski, told me the airline was unaware you got the refund from Chase, which explains why you were issued electronic certificates — vouchers, for future travel — on May 20. They appear to have been for around $4,600, since, that same day, when you booked your new reservations for October, ******* only charged your credit card $3,099 out of the total $7,694.

So these new reservations were funded both by you and (from an accounting perspective, at least) by The FareHub. “They used our money,” Mr. Rasgotra said.

That is what led to those two mysterious cancellations: An enraged Mr. Rasgotra told me The FareHub canceled your flights to prevent you from spending their money.

It’s a bit unclear how The FareHub was able to do so, as you had booked the reservations directly through *******. Mr. Rasgotra said The FareHub still had access to the new reservation, because the travel certificates ******* issued were connected to your original reservation and thus issued to The FareHub in your name. ******* had a different explanation involving a compromised MileagePlus account, but it doesn’t matter: One way or the other, on Sept. 20, The FareHub was able to cancel your October reservations.

That’s when you called to have ******* reissue those tickets, and the way the carrier did that was to issue yet another electronic travel certificate to you, for the total value of the tickets, $7,694, and then use that certificate to rebook the same flight for Oct. 10.

Once again, The FareHub could see this, and once again it canceled the reservation. But this time, ******* told me, The FareHub likely changed the email address associated with the reservation, which might explain why you arrived to the airport on Oct. 10 without knowing the reservation was canceled.

So who owes what to whom?

Let’s start with an easy one, that last-minute flight that you purchased on Oct. 10 for $4,475. It was canceled by the airline, and U.S. Department of Transportation rules are clear here. ******* owes you, and the carrier told me it has now reimbursed you that amount.

You also asked for $1,178 for the two rooms at the airport Marriott plus dinner and transportation. But lost in the back and forth was that ******* had already sent you a total of $900 for your expenses, which doesn’t cover the costs but, to me, seems reasonable.

Now for the $2,007 for those canceled plans in France: You’re out of luck. Airlines will reimburse passengers for travel expenses they missed out on only in the most extreme circumstances. Typically, that’s a job for travel insurance.

That leaves us with the $3,099 you charged to your card on May 20, to book your flights through the real *******. That money, according to *******, was subsequently used by The FareHub for other customers.

I wonder why ******* won’t take the blame for allowing that to happen and return you the $3,099, considering you never flew and the issue happened months after the carrier might have known that there were issues with The FareHub. ******* did not respond to my request for comment on this.

What can we learn from your debacle? It’s unfortunate that your

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search went astray, leading you to a poorly rated middleman that you didn’t want to use in the first place. The most obvious lesson is to take care to avoid sponsored links and click only on a company’s official website. But your inadvertent error kicked off a fiasco that also gives us an opportunity to consider chargebacks, and to issue a warning to anyone contacting their credit card company and declaring ******.

Asking for chargebacks, particularly those for high amounts, should not be seen as a default strategy but as a nuclear option. So exhaust every conventional complaint ******* in your arsenal before you go there.

Why? Companies will stop negotiating with you directly once you get the credit card company involved; they consider chargebacks a declaration of war. They only work when the traveler is 100 percent correct. Therefore, be very sure you are right — that you understand your rights and have your math straight, asking for the precise amount you were overcharged. I have seen so many occasions where this backfires, as nothing irks companies more than a chargeback, and like The FareHub, they often attempt to respond in kind.

If you need advice about a best-***** travel plan that went awry, send an email to *****@*****.tld.

---

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#******* #Canceled #Trip #Paris

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