Merchant dispute with airline over changed itinerary

Question

I'm having a problem with Orbitz, a third party travel site, where they changed my plans in a way that won't work for me. I need to know what I can do about it, so that either I get a refund or I get accommodations that work for me.

I originally booked a package deal (flights,hotel and car) with Orbitz on July 31st for travel date of 23rd Nov. It was for a flight at 7:45AM, the earliest my family can manage, given we have a child with special needs.

Around September 1, I received an email saying my itinerary has been changed and they have put us on a flight which is 1:45 hours earlier (departing at 6:00 AM). The 6:00 AM flight option was available when I did the original booking, but I chose not to take it even though it was cheaper and chose 7:45 a.m. flight. The 6 AM flight offered as a result of change to my itinerary will not work for my family, as it is too early for us to get to the airport.

I called Orbitz to see what they could do. Since the change is within 2 hours of the original scheduled time, they could not cancel my flight. They asked me to call American Airlines and request them to do so.

I called AA, and they offered me another flight which has 2 hour 40 min layover(original layover was 1 hour). My son has special needs and this itinerary will also not work for me. Now AA is not ready to refund my ticket and Orbitz has nothing to do with it. The reason I booked almost 4 months in advance was so I could select the itinerary that was convenient for my family and situation (special needs son).

In this situation, can I file a merchant dispute with my credit card issuer (Chase - Sapphire Preferred) as I am not getting the services I paid for? Or is there any other recourse for me?

Answer 1

Are you on Twitter?

If so, the first thing I'd do is tweet this question to @Orbitz and/or @AmericanAir (AA). I'll edit it to be a bit nicer english-wise. Tweeting (or Facebooking or Instgramming or ...) is one of the most effective ways to get customer service in 'edge' cases. Explain your case in a nice, tight narrative that has the pertinent facts, why you should get an exception. Social media tends to get results that you can't get just talking on the phone; in part because you're effectively talking with a higher-up person, and because you can make your case a bit more clearly.

You can actually tweet this StackExchange question directly, or word it yourself in a tweet/FB post/etc. On Twitter i'd link to here or somewhere else (too short), with something like "@Orbitz @AmericanAir, you changed our trip and now it doesn't work with our special needs child. Any way you can help us out? [link to this q or a blog post somewhere]".

As far as a merchant dispute; it would realistically depend on the agreement you signed with Orbitz when you bought the tickets. Likely it includes some flexibility for them to change your plans if the airline cancels the flight. If it does, and they followed all of their policies correctly, then technically you shouldn't dispute the charge.

It is possible that Chase might have some recourse on your behalf, though I don't think this qualifies for Trip Cancellation Insurance (Which you have through your Sapphire card ). It might be worth calling them, just to see. In the future, I would recommend booking through their site - not only do you get 25% bonus rewards when you use miles through there, which often is enough to offset the advantages of discount travel sites, but they're quite good at helping deal with these sorts of problems (as Sapphire is one of their top cards).