Delta Airlines REFUND BONANZA

[latupej]

I am posting this to help anyone who is trying to get a refund from a cancelled airfare from purchasing tickets with their PayPal account from www.delta.com.

It was simple, on September 26, 2011 (12:00am EST) I used my PayPal as a means to pay for the airfare I picked on www.delta.com. All was well, within seconds I received my receipt and itinerary from delta.com and on September 28, I noticed the amount of $1410.40 was successfully deducted from my bank account that is attached to PayPal.

10 hours after I used my PayPal account to purchase the Delta.com ticket, I HAD TO CANCEL due to other circumstances. I called Delta at 800-221-1212 (it is their reservations tel #) and was eventually forwarded to the Cincinnati Delta office and spoke with Qwynn who issued me a cancellation #, and stated that it would take 3-7 business days for my refund to go through. Life was good...

On October 27, I noticed that my $1401.40 was not credited back to my bank account nor anywhere in PayPal. This is when the nightmare began. I called Delta back at the 800# listed above, and was bounced around to 3 different people trying to find out what happened with my refund. I finally was connected to a Supervisor at Reservations who informed me that I should have been connected to Delta Refunds (800-847-0578 option #1), who I spoke with Clarise. After a significant wait time and hold, Clarise informed me that PayPal was issued the refund by Delta.com to their "TP credit card account" ending in XXX (not listing it) on 26 September, 2011. Additionally, she informed me to open up a "Resolution Case" with delta.com and to send the Delta Refund Department a fax listing, my name, ticket#, tel#, address, brief description of issue. 7 days later I received their formal response to the fax stating, on "26 September, 2011 Delta sent a refund in the amount of $1401.40 to a TP credit card (paypal) with an account ending in XXXX.

Called PayPal and the first rep was extremely nice and tried to look into the issue but could not find any refund from Delta to my account. Additionally, we tried to setup a dispute, but PayPal resolution center would not allow me to enter a dispute stating that "I had to contact Delta Airlines". The operator then escalated the issue and passed me to Michelle at PayPal. After a short wait time and much explanation, Michelle claimed she never heard of a TP credit card PayPal account but she was able to find an Account Manager for Delta.com. I am now awaiting an answer from PayPal and unfortunately my $1401.40 has been hostage by ACH cyberspace for 37 days now. I will update this post when new information comes in, and I have also accumulated approx. 6.5 hours worth of phone calls, emails, and faxes trying to rescue my $1401.40... I

[latupej · Accepted solution]

It's Nov 4, 2011, and finally I have received my refund from Delta Airlines (DA). Apparently, had DA just hit the refund button on their PayPal account, this event never would have occurred but instead, they treated it as a regular travel agency transaction, and refunded my money to a "TP account".

If this happens to you, read my post carefully because you will need to do all of things I did in order to get your money back. All in all, I was very impressed by the courtesy and help from the PayPal Dispute Center. HOWEVER, I most likely will never use PayPal to purchase an airline ticket again in fear of this happening again. I would encourage PayPal and Delta Airlines to learn from this event in the form of training for Delta Airlines personnel, in how to properly refund PayPal customers.

Thanks...