Air ticket refund - china eastern air

Horseyx2

Hello,

I've recently bought two tickets from Beijing to London from the china easten air website. I've since had my visa application for china rejected and the airline is refusing to give me a refund, obviously not their fault I didn't get in in fairness. Do I have any rights here at all? I'm in Vietnam at the moment and they won't even let me change the flights to ones from Hanoi. I think I'm most likely just out 800 euro but I thought I may aswell chance my arm here for help. Any advice is appreciated, cheers.

coylemj

You're in Vietnam, you purchased a ticket from an airline in China and now they are refusing you a refund because you can't travel to China so you register on an Irish discussion website and ask a bunch of anonymous people almost 10,000 kms away for consumer advice.

Let me guess, you sat an IQ test for the visa for China and failed?

You're in the far end of Asia FFS, ask a local.

ejmaztec

coylemj wrote: »

You're in Vietnam, you purchased a ticket from an airline in China and now they are refusing you a refund because you can't travel to China so you register on an Irish discussion website and ask a bunch of anonymous people almost 10,000 kms away for consumer advice.

Let me guess, you sat an IQ test for the visa for China and failed?

You're in the far end of Asia FFS, ask a local.

Perhaps the Vietnamese have outsourced consumer forum queries to Ireland?

dudara

Enough of the smart answers. You should all know by now that lots of Irish people turn to Boards for assistance, regardless of where they are based.

dudara

OP - it all depends on what kind of ticket you purchased, and if there are any cancellation penalties etc attached.

Horseyx2

Yeah the site says refunds are possible but they're telling me I ticked a box saying I waived the right to a refund when I bought the ticket. I thought I was agreeing to a set of terms and conditions which included what I had read about refunds.

Anyway was just hoping someone might know something about consumer rights (I'd be surprised if they had any tbh) in china.

Irish_Elect_Eng

Horseyx2 wrote: »

Hello,

I've recently bought two tickets from Beijing to London from the china easten air website. I've since had my visa application for china rejected and the airline is refusing to give me a refund, obviously not their fault I didn't get in in fairness. Do I have any rights here at all? I'm in Vietnam at the moment and they won't even let me change the flights to ones from Hanoi. I think I'm most likely just out 800 euro but I thought I may aswell chance my arm here for help. Any advice is appreciated, cheers.

Check if you actually need a visa to get the flight, you may not require a visa if you are just changing planes in China as you are not actually entering the country. Check with your airline...etc

castie

You may be able to transfer. You dont need a visa to transfer flights.

However since your flights will be on different tickets I doubt your bags would be transfered and since you would need to clear immigration to get your bags then you would have an issue.

Ring the airline and ask them if theres any flights you can buy to get to beijing that they can add somehow to your ticket to allow your bags to be transfered.

Other option is ship your bags home and go carry on only and either check in online or at a transfers desk after you land in Beijing.

Horseyx2

castie wrote: »

You may be able to transfer. You dont need a visa to transfer flights.

However since your flights will be on different tickets I doubt your bags would be transfered and since you would need to clear immigration to get your bags then you would have an issue.

Ring the airline and ask them if theres any flights you can buy to get to beijing that they can add somehow to your ticket to allow your bags to be transferred.

This is an excellent suggestion I'm shocked I didn't think of it myself. So the situation is getting a bit convoluted now,

We have a flight from Beijing to shanghai, and another flight from shanghai to london on our itinerary. We found a flight for 180 euro from Hanoi to Shanghai. Does anyone in the airline business know if it's possible to just skip the first leg of a connecting flight and get on the second? We've emailed the airline about it but they won't pick up phones at the moment so can't talk to them. The 180 flight is also with china eastern, so we're trying to add it to our itinerary.

Also the layover is 31 hours, might this cause problems? I don't think it should because they sell this ticket as a package from Hanoi to London for other people, I'll probably email the Chinese embassy in ireland just in case.

Thanks very much castie

orionm_73

Skipping the first leg of an itinerary will usually mean the 2nd flight gets cancelled as basically you have become a "no-show".

jor el

What you need to do is get them to change the ticket so that the first leg of the journey from Beijing to Shanghai to Hanoi to Shanghai. You'd need to pay whatever extra is involved there, but once the ticket is changed then the 2nd leg of the journey will not be cancelled. If you don't get them to acknowledge this change, then the 2nd leg will not exist when you get to Shanghai, and you'd still have the immigration and visa issue, as you'd be on an unconnected flight.

All of this requires the airline to agree, and re-issue the ticket. If they don't want to do it, they don't have to. This effectively comes under a change of mind on your part, and even if you were in Ireland you'd have no consumer rights in this case.

Horseyx2

Thanks so much to everyone who gave advice on this,

The airline is refusing to change the first leg of our flight and told us we cannot just jump in for the second flight. So we've lost the flight, but I really am impressed by the effort put in by random strangers 10,000km away. Again thanks so much.

Hal Emmerich

coylemj wrote: »

You're in Vietnam, you purchased a ticket from an airline in China and now they are refusing you a refund because you can't travel to China so you register on an Irish discussion website and ask a bunch of anonymous people almost 10,000 kms away for consumer advice.

Let me guess, you sat an IQ test for the visa for China and failed?

You're in the far end of Asia FFS, ask a local.

Contrary much?

Thoie

A little late to the party, and the laws may be different over there, but in Europe if you had to cancel the flight you'd be entitled to a refund of the airport taxes, minus an administration fee. Many airlines set the admin fee so high that it's hardly worthwhile claiming the refund, but it's worth looking into.

castie

jor el wrote: »

What you need to do is get them to change the ticket so that the first leg of the journey from Beijing to Shanghai to Hanoi to Shanghai. You'd need to pay whatever extra is involved there, but once the ticket is changed then the 2nd leg of the journey will not be cancelled. If you don't get them to acknowledge this change, then the 2nd leg will not exist when you get to Shanghai, and you'd still have the immigration and visa issue, as you'd be on an unconnected flight.

All of this requires the airline to agree, and re-issue the ticket. If they don't want to do it, they don't have to. This effectively comes under a change of mind on your part, and even if you were in Ireland you'd have no consumer rights in this case.

He already said they refused to change the first leg.
Even on seperate tickets you can use the transfers section of the airport.
The only downside is your baggage doesnt get put through.

I had to do it before flying back from Sydney to Cork. Ticket was to Dublin and they wanted a few hundred more than a straight Lon Cork flight to change.

I had only carry on as it was a short trip home so booked the seperate ticket and used transfers in Heathrow to get my Cork Flight and became a no show for the Dublin one.