Air France charged more to my card than they said they had!

Petard

Story:

Last month, I bought two tickets on-line from Air France. The total cost was £316 plus a £9 penalty for paying by credit card, i.e. £325 in all. This amount was indicated as the "Total paid on-line" - I have a screencap of this and it is also shown in the confirmatory e-mail. However, they actually debited my card by £334.

So I phoned them. They confirmed that £325 was indeed right, and said that if I wanted a refund I should fax them a copy of my credit-card statement - insisting on this even after I had told them I had no access to fax. Eventually they agreed that I could send them a copy by e-mail. This I did - and more than a fortnight later, after chasing, they e-mailed back, not with an explanation of the discrepancy, still less a refund, but with a flat denial that there had been any error.

So I rang Trading Standards and, via the options, ending up talking to Consumer Direct. They were very helpful, said that because my contract was with Air France in France, Trading Standards had no power to act, but that an outfit called Euroconsumer could help. Quicker, though, would be to take it up with my credit card company, who, under the Consumer Credit Act 1974, had just the same liabilities as the airline.

So I rang MBNA - who proved excellent, refunding the money that same day and saying they would take it up with Air France. Whether they will or not, I don't know - if my case is isolated, it may not be worth their while; but since this error arose in an automated system, they may well have hundreds of customers who've been overcharged in just the same way.

Comments:

Air France publish only an 0871 number, charged at 10p/min (from a landline) of which they get a cut. I was on the phone to them for 25 minutes (not to that number, though), during which I was mostly kept on hold. Making money like this from those you've given a problem is rotten service. Better companies do not do it. For example, I can phone my ISP or MBNA free of charge. And in France, even Air France publish a number charged at landline rates. Perhaps French consumers are less tolerant of this sort of malarkey.

Taking more than a fortnight to answer an e-mail is shamefully slow. All the other companies I deal with reply in less than 24 hours. And it can't be a French big-company thing, either, since when I pursued a complaint with National Citer two years ago, they too replied to each e-mail within hours. Seems it's just Air France....

cactusdust

For future reference, you can search for an alternative landline number for Air France-KLM (and many, many others) at:

http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php

Not sure what your point is, but glad you managed to sort out this obviously frustrating issue. Happy flightings.

Petard

Thanks, Cactusdust.


I should've said it was through Say No to 0870 that I found the number I used (what a useful site that is!) and that my point is twofold:

• (1) Beware of Air France;
• (2) Companies that serve us badly can expect these days to be named and shamed in public.

NFH

Petard wrote: »

And in France, even Air France publish a number charged at landline rates. Perhaps French consumers are less tolerant of this sort of malarkey.

Actually, I find that the French have been putting up with these premium rate customer service numbers for many years longer than the British, and they're often much more costly in France, for example banks operating on 4-digit numbers starting 39 which cost €0.34/min.