6 ms·

Long story short: Guy had flight canceled and wants airlines to have automated refund system. The issue is though that no company I know of really wants an au

Long story short: Guy had flight canceled and wants airlines to have automated refund system. The issue is though that no company I know of really wants an automated easy path to disperse money back to the public. Ever try to collect on an insurance policy?

kirykl 6y ago
Amazon does a pretty good job automating returns. It’s also good enough to be a differentiator when choosing where to buy.
- tacostakohashi 6y ago
  I had an Amazon item that didn't show up / got lost by UPS. The process presented by Amazon for this was pretty silly / tedious: 1) Initially, the tracking page said the item is late, maybe lost, if it doesn't arrive by X date (2-3 days after it was due), check back here to initiate a replacement / refund. 2) I went back on X date to arrange a refund. You click the button, initially it takes you to an automated chat thing that asks is this the item you are asking about (yes), do you want a refund or replacement (refund)... then it hands you over to a human and you have the same conversation again. 3) Finally, the human issued the refund... but as a gift card / credit without asking me. In any case, it was a 5-10 minute process hidden behind both automated and non-automated chats, which is stupid and unnecessary, especially considering that these are the people that invented (patented) 1-click. They knew from their own tracking that it was missing, so it could and should have just been a single button for replace vs refund. I suspect the steps depend on the item / amount involved, some customer risk score, etc, etc, I am sure it's all very elaborate, but in my case it was tedious. Issuing a gift card is consumer-hostile BS too, should be outlawed if you ask me. I paid for something with money, it didn't show up, so I get the money back, simple. If I wanted to buy a gift card, I would.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - massysett 6y ago
    In my experience I simply search for "contact us" in the Amazon search box (it's not easy to find otherwise) and it brings up a chat bot. I tell it my item never came, and it shows me orders and asks "do you mean this one" until we zero down on what item. Then the bot issues an immediate refund. I use this where tracking says the order has already been delivered (sometimes delivery personnel lie and say they delivered something they didn't; sometimes they deliver it to the wrong place.) If tracking shows that the item has not even been delivered, this is doable from the "My Orders" webpage directly. Pretty easy in my experience--I expect this process with any other vendor would be much more time-consuming--but as you say it may vary depending on whatever arbitrary factors.
    - lkbm 6y ago
      I have had that bot say "wait a few days" (after the package had been reported delivered), but yeah, it's generally quick and easy. (And, fwiw, the already-delivered package did show up in a couple days. They do regularly mark things as delivered before delivering them.)
  - jackson1442 6y ago
    Interesting. How long ago did this happen? This happened to me on an Amazon -> USPS package. I clicked the "still don't have it" button, clicked refund, and saw the money refunded to my card after about 2 days.
  - jimmaswell 6y ago
    All of my refunds have been painless, many returnless. It must depend on hidden factors. One of my most recent returnless refunds was Amazon credit rather than to the payment method, probably because it'd happened too much lately. I still don't mind and their return policies are much more generous than the norm.
- hansvm 6y ago
  They're pretty good at automating returns but kind of shitty at refunds in any scenario where their system thinks you received a package that you actually did not. I've heard a number of stories to that effect, and the one time it happened to me they had a bot that charged my card every time customer service issued a refund (at the time, you had to go through customer service to get a refund without a return). It took four additional attempts before they were able to actually keep the automated system from issuing additional charges.
unethical_ban 6y ago
There is a massive difference in fraud potential between a cancelled flight/refund for a service not delivered, and an insurance payout.
- these_are_not_t 6y ago
  Not if the automation can be somehow gamed. If someone manage to find a flaw in the system, the company is at risk of losing big before it figure out the issue. Will this money be lost for good is probably not a question that company wants to find an answer for the hard way.
- uberman 6y ago
  This does not need to be about fraud at all. Most companies grease the wheels when it comes to collecting money and they put breaks and checks in the way when it comes to paying money out. Ever wonder why you get "in-store" credit before you get your money back? Ever wonder why the adjuster offers you 50% of the value for the thing you claim was destroyed? Why you get offered a check up front rather than what you are due as a result of a litigation? Why there is a co-pay or a deductible? Why your medical coverage rejects your first claim? All these practices are intentional and structured to discourage people from getting what is technically owed them. Feel free to look up "Unfair Claims Practice" some being illegal and some being just the normal course of business.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
The UK has a near-universal policy for refunds on cancelled or delayed train services ("delay repay"). Several train operating companies issue these refunds automatically for tickets booked directly with them, and others will automatically notify the customer that they are entitled to claim. I think some companies have taken the view that reducing the amount of administrative overhead for both themselves and passengers is a better long-term investment than trying to weasel out of otherwise reasonable claims. An airline with that kind of policy in place is certainly one which I would be more likely to make subsequent bookings with!
- tialaramex 6y ago
  For Delay Repay you'll get the same sort of nonsense this post is about from travellers whose expectations don't match reality. A train ticket from A to B is a contract to arrange travel for you from A to B. If it proves impossible to fulfil the contracted travel on time, it'll be re-arranged and you get compensation for your trouble under Delay Repay. But the exact same sort of person will buy a ticket from A to B, another from B to C, and one from C to D. Then upon hearing, while waiting at A, that the B-C train is affected by a delay, they book tickets from Z-D and take a taxi to Z to catch that train. Then they're very angry that the train operator wants to compensate them only for the delay on the short B-C journey, rather than pay for their taxi and Z-D ticket. But the B-C journey operator has absolutely no reason to know you wanted to leave from A or travel to D. You've confused your goal with the quite different contractual arrangement you made. An A-D ticket might perhaps cost more than your assortment of A-B, B-C, C-D tickets, but that ticket does come with the promise to actually get you from A to D like you wanted, if it's so important that you'd arrange an alternate method to get there, just buy the more expensive ticket that does what you actually wanted and don't act as though the operating companies should read your mind. Story time: Some time ago now, I was making a routine journey up the country, I had purchased my ticket which would have me arrive in my destination city about 2300 or so, fifteen minutes walk from my hotel, via London and I set off on time late afternoon. Unfortunately there was a one-under (ie most likely somebody committed suicide, though that's a matter to be decided much later, at the moment it happens they're just a person who is under a train for some reason, the power needs to go off and the lines must be closed while somebody sorts that out) just ahead of us, delaying us by an hour into London. But because the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey I wasn't bothered. I crossed London and arrived far too late for my connection of course, but again the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey and they boarded me onto a later train. This train was scheduled around overnight engineering work so although it was the same physical type of train and the same route as usual, it took about two hours longer, and it would not reach my final destination. Instead it would arrive at about 0150 on the outskirts of an airport some distance away and terminate. The remainder of the railway was closed overnight, and I would travel by road. Now, I imagine that planners for the operating company concluded that almost all travellers do not want to go to an airport at 0150 or take a coach across country to their real destination afterwards. So they had assumed that this last train of the night would be empty or nearly empty when it finally arrived at the airport. So although they were obliged to arrange onward transit they hadn't bothered. But because of the one-under there was dozens of us on this last train. At its final calling point was one confused employee. He's expecting maybe one tired person gets off the train, he apologises for lack of onward transit, if he's lucky the person says they'll sort it out because their actual destination is nowhere near a station anyway, otherwise he gets a cab and goes home. Instead he's facing a crowd of dozens. He's going go need at least one coach, to the city they were originally expecting to arrive at three hours ago. He calls his bosses. There are no coaches. Then he telephones every taxi firm in the city, and fleets of taxis begin arriving. Instead of taking people to the railway station they had tickets to, the taxi drivers see it as much simpler to take them wherever they are going directly - the train company picks up the tab either way. So I checked in to my hotel about twenty minutes later. What's key here is that the expectation of the supplier is correctly aligned to my goal. I wanted to travel to my destination, they wanted to deliver me to that destination. When things went wrong, we both remained clear on the goal and so the resolution was satisfactory. A late night taxi for each train passenger is obviously horribly expensive and they lost money on that deal. But if I'd gone off piste and tried to get there by some other method from London even if it was cheaper they're under no obligation to compensate me for that, the deal was they get me to the agreed destination.
cactus2093 6y ago
Another interesting takeaway is that the EU regulations meant to protect customers in exactly this scenario seemed to be pretty worthless in practice. The airlines seem to have realized that the cost of just ignoring them is easily less than the cost of following them. After all there are a finite number of people able to individually sue you, especially if you’re at the scale where you consistently screw over more customers than there are available court times in a given district. But why doesn’t that backlog of 100,000 customers waiting to file their claims orchestrate a big class action lawsuit?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Not all European countries have class action lawsuits. This is something to be fixed through regulations. If the rule was "customer has to be provided the compensation to their means of payment automatically, if this is not done, the compensation triples", airlines would quickly find a way to make it happen.
  - listenallyall 6y ago
    > This is something to be fixed through regulations. More regulations to force compliance with existing regulations currently being widely ignored? a few years from now you'll be saying more regulations are needed to make sure airlines comply with the regulations that were created to ensure compliance with the original regulations.

kirykl 6y ago

Amazon does a pretty good job automating returns. It’s also good enough to be a differentiator when choosing where to buy.

tacostakohashi 6y ago
I had an Amazon item that didn't show up / got lost by UPS. The process presented by Amazon for this was pretty silly / tedious: 1) Initially, the tracking page said the item is late, maybe lost, if it doesn't arrive by X date (2-3 days after it was due), check back here to initiate a replacement / refund. 2) I went back on X date to arrange a refund. You click the button, initially it takes you to an automated chat thing that asks is this the item you are asking about (yes), do you want a refund or replacement (refund)... then it hands you over to a human and you have the same conversation again. 3) Finally, the human issued the refund... but as a gift card / credit without asking me. In any case, it was a 5-10 minute process hidden behind both automated and non-automated chats, which is stupid and unnecessary, especially considering that these are the people that invented (patented) 1-click. They knew from their own tracking that it was missing, so it could and should have just been a single button for replace vs refund. I suspect the steps depend on the item / amount involved, some customer risk score, etc, etc, I am sure it's all very elaborate, but in my case it was tedious. Issuing a gift card is consumer-hostile BS too, should be outlawed if you ask me. I paid for something with money, it didn't show up, so I get the money back, simple. If I wanted to buy a gift card, I would.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- massysett 6y ago
  In my experience I simply search for "contact us" in the Amazon search box (it's not easy to find otherwise) and it brings up a chat bot. I tell it my item never came, and it shows me orders and asks "do you mean this one" until we zero down on what item. Then the bot issues an immediate refund. I use this where tracking says the order has already been delivered (sometimes delivery personnel lie and say they delivered something they didn't; sometimes they deliver it to the wrong place.) If tracking shows that the item has not even been delivered, this is doable from the "My Orders" webpage directly. Pretty easy in my experience--I expect this process with any other vendor would be much more time-consuming--but as you say it may vary depending on whatever arbitrary factors.
  - lkbm 6y ago
    I have had that bot say "wait a few days" (after the package had been reported delivered), but yeah, it's generally quick and easy. (And, fwiw, the already-delivered package did show up in a couple days. They do regularly mark things as delivered before delivering them.)
- jackson1442 6y ago
  Interesting. How long ago did this happen? This happened to me on an Amazon -> USPS package. I clicked the "still don't have it" button, clicked refund, and saw the money refunded to my card after about 2 days.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  All of my refunds have been painless, many returnless. It must depend on hidden factors. One of my most recent returnless refunds was Amazon credit rather than to the payment method, probably because it'd happened too much lately. I still don't mind and their return policies are much more generous than the norm.
hansvm 6y ago
They're pretty good at automating returns but kind of shitty at refunds in any scenario where their system thinks you received a package that you actually did not. I've heard a number of stories to that effect, and the one time it happened to me they had a bot that charged my card every time customer service issued a refund (at the time, you had to go through customer service to get a refund without a return). It took four additional attempts before they were able to actually keep the automated system from issuing additional charges.

unethical_ban 6y ago

There is a massive difference in fraud potential between a cancelled flight/refund for a service not delivered, and an insurance payout.

these_are_not_t 6y ago
Not if the automation can be somehow gamed. If someone manage to find a flaw in the system, the company is at risk of losing big before it figure out the issue. Will this money be lost for good is probably not a question that company wants to find an answer for the hard way.
uberman 6y ago
This does not need to be about fraud at all. Most companies grease the wheels when it comes to collecting money and they put breaks and checks in the way when it comes to paying money out. Ever wonder why you get "in-store" credit before you get your money back? Ever wonder why the adjuster offers you 50% of the value for the thing you claim was destroyed? Why you get offered a check up front rather than what you are due as a result of a litigation? Why there is a co-pay or a deductible? Why your medical coverage rejects your first claim? All these practices are intentional and structured to discourage people from getting what is technically owed them. Feel free to look up "Unfair Claims Practice" some being illegal and some being just the normal course of business.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

The UK has a near-universal policy for refunds on cancelled or delayed train services ("delay repay"). Several train operating companies issue these refunds automatically for tickets booked directly with them, and others will automatically notify the customer that they are entitled to claim. I think some companies have taken the view that reducing the amount of administrative overhead for both themselves and passengers is a better long-term investment than trying to weasel out of otherwise reasonable claims. An airline with that kind of policy in place is certainly one which I would be more likely to make subsequent bookings with!

tialaramex 6y ago
For Delay Repay you'll get the same sort of nonsense this post is about from travellers whose expectations don't match reality. A train ticket from A to B is a contract to arrange travel for you from A to B. If it proves impossible to fulfil the contracted travel on time, it'll be re-arranged and you get compensation for your trouble under Delay Repay. But the exact same sort of person will buy a ticket from A to B, another from B to C, and one from C to D. Then upon hearing, while waiting at A, that the B-C train is affected by a delay, they book tickets from Z-D and take a taxi to Z to catch that train. Then they're very angry that the train operator wants to compensate them only for the delay on the short B-C journey, rather than pay for their taxi and Z-D ticket. But the B-C journey operator has absolutely no reason to know you wanted to leave from A or travel to D. You've confused your goal with the quite different contractual arrangement you made. An A-D ticket might perhaps cost more than your assortment of A-B, B-C, C-D tickets, but that ticket does come with the promise to actually get you from A to D like you wanted, if it's so important that you'd arrange an alternate method to get there, just buy the more expensive ticket that does what you actually wanted and don't act as though the operating companies should read your mind. Story time: Some time ago now, I was making a routine journey up the country, I had purchased my ticket which would have me arrive in my destination city about 2300 or so, fifteen minutes walk from my hotel, via London and I set off on time late afternoon. Unfortunately there was a one-under (ie most likely somebody committed suicide, though that's a matter to be decided much later, at the moment it happens they're just a person who is under a train for some reason, the power needs to go off and the lines must be closed while somebody sorts that out) just ahead of us, delaying us by an hour into London. But because the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey I wasn't bothered. I crossed London and arrived far too late for my connection of course, but again the operating companies are responsible for the end-to-end journey and they boarded me onto a later train. This train was scheduled around overnight engineering work so although it was the same physical type of train and the same route as usual, it took about two hours longer, and it would not reach my final destination. Instead it would arrive at about 0150 on the outskirts of an airport some distance away and terminate. The remainder of the railway was closed overnight, and I would travel by road. Now, I imagine that planners for the operating company concluded that almost all travellers do not want to go to an airport at 0150 or take a coach across country to their real destination afterwards. So they had assumed that this last train of the night would be empty or nearly empty when it finally arrived at the airport. So although they were obliged to arrange onward transit they hadn't bothered. But because of the one-under there was dozens of us on this last train. At its final calling point was one confused employee. He's expecting maybe one tired person gets off the train, he apologises for lack of onward transit, if he's lucky the person says they'll sort it out because their actual destination is nowhere near a station anyway, otherwise he gets a cab and goes home. Instead he's facing a crowd of dozens. He's going go need at least one coach, to the city they were originally expecting to arrive at three hours ago. He calls his bosses. There are no coaches. Then he telephones every taxi firm in the city, and fleets of taxis begin arriving. Instead of taking people to the railway station they had tickets to, the taxi drivers see it as much simpler to take them wherever they are going directly - the train company picks up the tab either way. So I checked in to my hotel about twenty minutes later. What's key here is that the expectation of the supplier is correctly aligned to my goal. I wanted to travel to my destination, they wanted to deliver me to that destination. When things went wrong, we both remained clear on the goal and so the resolution was satisfactory. A late night taxi for each train passenger is obviously horribly expensive and they lost money on that deal. But if I'd gone off piste and tried to get there by some other method from London even if it was cheaper they're under no obligation to compensate me for that, the deal was they get me to the agreed destination.

cactus2093 6y ago

Another interesting takeaway is that the EU regulations meant to protect customers in exactly this scenario seemed to be pretty worthless in practice. The airlines seem to have realized that the cost of just ignoring them is easily less than the cost of following them. After all there are a finite number of people able to individually sue you, especially if you’re at the scale where you consistently screw over more customers than there are available court times in a given district. But why doesn’t that backlog of 100,000 customers waiting to file their claims orchestrate a big class action lawsuit?

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
Not all European countries have class action lawsuits. This is something to be fixed through regulations. If the rule was "customer has to be provided the compensation to their means of payment automatically, if this is not done, the compensation triples", airlines would quickly find a way to make it happen.
- listenallyall 6y ago
  > This is something to be fixed through regulations. More regulations to force compliance with existing regulations currently being widely ignored? a few years from now you'll be saying more regulations are needed to make sure airlines comply with the regulations that were created to ensure compliance with the original regulations.