Booking.com complaint: Refund for a flight ticket

On July 1st, I was checking my flight reservation on the United Airlines website, and I had in mind to cancel the flight because it doesn’t suit my needs. The cancellation option on the United Airlines website says that there will be a refund for the cancellation, so I cancelled the flight. The website automatically generated a refund request, but it was later denied due to unspecified reasons.

I contacted Booking customer service and United Airlines at least five times for many days after that, asking how I should get the refund. The agent of booking insisted that the ticket is non-refundable, but I argued that the cancellation page of the United Airlines does show a refund. Another agent of booking asked for an authorization code I need to get from United Airlines so I can get the refund from them. I called United Airlines and they told me that they don’t have any authorization code to give me. Later I called booking again and learned that the code is unnecessary.

United Airlines told me that the ticket has already been refunded, so I called booking again, only to hear that booking hasn’t received the refund yet and cannot give the money back to me. The agent told me to call back later and see if they have received the refund.

On July 11th, I called United Airlines to check with them the refund status of this reservation, and the refunds department told me that booking.com has notified United Airlines on July 6th that the refund has been received. I called booking afterwards and asked for the refund, and they still told me they haven’t received the refund. They still insisted that the ticket is non-refundable, and asked me to call United Airlines again and tell the Airlines to send them a ation email regarding the information regarding the refund, such as amount, date and passenger information.

The process has taken me more than a week by now, and I still haven’t received a refund. By now, the booking agents have asked for an authorization code which I learned from the airlines, doesn’t exist, and even after I verified with the Airlines that they have received the refund, the agent insisted that they received no refund and asked me to call the Airlines to send them the ation email. It has been a tiring, confusing and repetitive process, and for each call for either party I needed to wait for at least ten to twenty minutes, sometimes half an hour. I get different responses from different parties every time, and I am starting to worry about whether I am getting my refund.

I will call United Airlines in their working hours, and ask them to send a ation email, and I will also ask them to send the email to me for verification purposes. However, I have already ed with them earlier that booking has already received the refund, and booking still denies receiving it, so I’m worried that the agent will simply claim that they didn’t receive any ation email and demand some other kind of verification from me. I’m starting to doubt that I’m wasting my time and that booking simply doesn’t want to give me the refund.

For now I will continue with the cooperation and ask United Airlines to send the ation email. If, by then, booking denies receiving the email, I’m afraid I’ll have to file a complaint or find other legal means to protect my right.