Woman turns to 7OYS after denied refund for canceled flight

MENLO PARK, Calif. (KGO) -- A Menlo Park woman who lost more than a $1,000 after canceling a reservation on Expedia.com, turned to 7 On Your Side for help.

When it came time to book a flight for her niece, Janet Peterson went online to Expedia.

"She was going to fly down, drive his car back for Christmas," Peterson said.

Her niece Hadley was going to fly to Santa Barbara, pick up her grandfather and drive him to the Bay Area.

"She decided she wanted to do more of a road trip," Peterson said.

Later, Hadley decided to drive down instead, so Peterson went back online to cancel the flight. The website provided a special number for canceling flights.

"So, we called and talked to a young man who said it was no problem to cancel. It would be a $200 or $250 cancellation fee," she said.

She'd get a $950 credit on her Expedia account, which worked out fine until she tried to use that credit.

"And they said you don't have a credit. Nothing," she said.

Peterson explained she had called the cancellation number. Expedia said it had no record of any such call. Janet set out to prove she made that call.

"We called Comcast and got the phone records," she said.

She got a list of all phone calls made from her office and there it was, the call to the cancellation line. She showed that to Expedia.

"And they said well that doesn't prove anything. It just shows you called the cancellation line, but it's not proof you canceled the flight," Peterson said.

She was astonished.

"It made absolutely no sense, but they just stood by it," Peterson said. "The end result was, sorry you're out of luck, $1,150 gone."

She contacted 7 On Your Side and we contacted Expedia and after looking into the case, Expedia did refund the entire $1,150 airfare after all. Expedia said it was still trying to figure out what went wrong and said: "We take customer complaints extremely seriously, and are researching what happened in this case to ensure we have appropriately resolved this issue."

If you make a transaction over the phone, whether it's ordering or canceling, ask for a receipt by email. And if you have an account with the company, check right away to make sure your transaction went through.