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Turkish Airlines - I tried to either change or cancel my airline tickets

  • 10-05-2014 2:30pm
    #1
    StickyIcky
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 899 ✭✭✭


    Hi yall

    I've very little experience with this type of thing and my missus has even less. She booked us a couple of tickets yesterday from Dublin Ireland to Sochi Russia and back again. Each ticket was €500, so a grand total. She decided the same day she bought the tickets she wanted to change the return ticket.

    So I called Turkish Airlines call center (routed through a dublin 01 phone number) and it took them 30 minutes of mainly me waiting for her to look up things on her extremely slow system to answer my two questions. 1) how much to change the return flight 2) how much to cancel the ticket.

    Long story short basically the tickets are basically 'non refundable' so we'd get nothing back.

    It seems to me like robbery to sell someone tickets for flights that are two months away and not allow them to refund them the very next day.

    To me this goes against my sense of right and wrong. I mean what is the airline missing out on apart from perhaps paying someone €15 per hour to operate a computer and cancel the tickets. I'd be happy to pay administration charges.

    I kinda feel like making an issue out of this with the airline just because I don't like big corporations bulling us little consumers around.

    What do you reckon? Would I be wasting my time?


Comments

  • #2
    athtrasna
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,420 ✭✭✭✭athtrasna


    When you buy flights you tick a box to agree to the terms and conditions. These specify whether or not the booking can be amended. Your wife would have to have agreed with these in order to make the booking.


  • #3
    StickyIcky
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 899 ✭✭✭StickyIcky


    Yip I know but people can write whatever they want in the terms and conditions but it if it goes against your statutory rights for example it's not applicable. So "my wife ticked the T&C box" isn't really the right answer to the question I'm looking for. For example when shops say they give a 12 month warranty with that television you bought it doesn't mean that you can't get it fixed after the 12 month period for free if you know your rights. Another example an online shop I bought something from had a T&C box that I ticked before checkout and in the pages of text it said they only give a 30 day warranty. They tried to say because I ticked the box I was only going to get that 30 day warranty. In the end I got it replaced under warranty even though it was almost 2 years old. Why? Because I know my rights when it comes to that kind of thing and I don't accept someones T&C blindly.

    As it comes down to it I've no idea about this 'non-refundable' tickets thing. I'm paying for a service that hasn't been provided yet. So surely I should be able to as a consumer change my mind the day after paying for a service that isn't due to be provided for two months from now?

    The question is are they within their rights to deny a refund on a service that's not yet provided and do we not have any rights to cancel tickets well ahead of time and get a vast majority of our money back?


  • #4
    Miaireland
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,065 ✭✭✭Miaireland


    The whole point is the airline are not refusing you the service, you have changed your mind and decided that you do not want to use the service that you purchased. The airline do not have to refund you and they are well within their rights to not to do so. Some airlines allow you make change the dates of your tickets (at your cost) and some don't. You agree to this in the terms and conditions. The terms and conditions are not there as a joke they are their for a reason.

    This is not a big company bullying the little consumer. This is a consumer who needs to education themselves about buying services online and what they are agreeing to when they tick yes that they have read and agreed to the terms and conditions.


  • #5
    killbillvol2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,178 ✭✭✭killbillvol2


    There are different types of tickets with different degrees of flexibility. Your wife should have booked flexible tickets. The Turkish airlines website clearly lists the terms before you buy the tickets. If you wanted to have the option to change your mind you should have bought different tickets.

    I had to change my outgoing flights recently and they charged €50 which I thought was reasonable. I had paid more for the original flights to allow for the possibility of changing.


  • #6
    galwayjohn89
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,930 ✭✭✭galwayjohn89


    StickyIcky wrote: »
    Another example an online shop I bought something from had a T&C box that I ticked before checkout and in the pages of text it said they only give a 30 day warranty. They tried to say because I ticked the box I was only going to get that 30 day warranty. In the end I got it replaced under warranty even though it was almost 2 years old. Why? Because I know my rights when it comes to that kind of thing and I don't accept someones T&C blindly.


    Don't want to go off subject but are you sure you got it replaced under warranty? Sounds like you didn't but got it replaced due to consumer law. They are too completely different things.

    With regard to the flights, Turkish are within their rights as far as I know. Seems logical, each airline has fare buckets and once they are sold out the fare jumps to another bucket, you might have taken the last two cheap fares for that flight and then Turkish could have lost passengers who chose another cheaper airline and possibly with a multi-stop/longer itinerary, so they could have lost out money. Airlines will charge extra for the possibility of changing flights willy-nilly as otherwise they risk everyone changing and empty fights going out.


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  • #7
    StickyIcky
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 899 ✭✭✭StickyIcky


    Vuzuggu wrote: »
    With regard to the flights, Turkish are within their rights as far as I know. Seems logical, each airline has fare buckets and once they are sold out the fare jumps to another bucket, you might have taken the last two cheap fares for that flight and then Turkish could have lost passengers who chose another cheaper airline and possibly with a multi-stop/longer itinerary, so they could have lost out money. Airlines will charge extra for the possibility of changing flights willy-nilly as otherwise they risk everyone changing and empty fights going out.

    Yea I guess I didn't really think of it that way. If I were running an airline business I wouldn't want this happening as you couldn't really run it efficiently.


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