Iberia has unfairly charged me 60 euros of cancellation fees, directly contradicting their earlier promise, and their website does not have obvious ways to complain. What recourse do I have?
Details:
- I needed to make a booking and transport a pet animal in the cabin. Before booking the flight, I called customer service, and asked about the process, while mentioning the exact flight I was planning to book. I was told that I can only add the animal transport service after I have already completed the booking. I asked, what if adding this service is not possible for some reason, can a solution be found at no cost to me, for example by changing the flight date? I was reassured that this will be possible, at no additional cost to me.
- I made the booking, and immediately called customer service again, to add the service, just as instructed. I was told that adding the service is not possible for this flight, nor can the booking / flight date be changed to one that allows animal transport. After a long back and forth, the only solution they offered was cancelling the booking at 30€ cost to me. I was told very clearly (no chance of misunderstanding) that the booking was cancelled and I'd get the refund—sans the 30€—within 24 hours.
- Not trusting them, I called again the next day to confirm that the booking is indeed cancelled, but now I was told that it actually wasn't. I asked again to cancel it. This time I got a case number and I was told that the refund comes in not in 24 hours, but in 5-7 days.
- After 8 days, no refund came in so I had to call again. Refund appeared only after 10 days, but only half of the sum was refunded (one passenger out of two on the booking).
- Called again, and to get the complete refund for the ticket, I was charged another 30€ fee, now the total coming to 60€. I got another case number. I was told that I can put in a complaint on their website, but in reality this is not possible. First, this section of the website is for claims only, not complaints, second, it doesn't work (server error).
Do I have any recourse after this amount of mistreatment, and getting unfairly charged? Can I get my 60€ back? My conversations with customer support must have been recorded: I gave explicit permission to record it each time. But only they have those recordings, not me.
