Disputed/Unfulfilled Transaction

saltllama

I'm not sure if this is on the right board, so please feel free to direct me elsewhere if more appropriate.

I booked a flight for this coming August from Kutaisi (Georgia) to Lviv (Ukraine) with WizzAir (Ukraine division) back in January, using my visa credit card - in April I was contacted by them advising me of a change to the flight time, which I accepted. Subsequently I received a further email in May telling me the route had now been cancelled, and that I needed to phone their contact centre to discuss options.

After doing that I agreed to their alternative of flying me to Kiev rather than Lviv, subsequently the time of the flight has been changed three times - finally to a time which is not acceptable to me, so I have made alternative travel plans.

Every time they have emailed they state that I am entitled to a refund if the new time is inconvenient, they state that as my transaction is more than 3 months old they cannot refund to my credit card (I don't know why this is the case, or even if it is true) therefore I have had to write providing a ridiculous amount of information to their office in Kiev in order for them to refund to my bank account (copies of passport/credit card statement/email confirmation/full bank account numbers/details - they even wanted tax code information that has no relevance.)

It's now 3 weeks since I wrote to them and I haven't heard anything, their contact centre is unable to confirm if they have received the documents. I have done some research on google and it seems many customers have had similar problems with the airline and the recommendation has been to go via my credit card company rather than the airline - I spoke to someone at my credit card company today who told me that as I recognise and do not dispute the transaction they would not get involved and I need to go via the airline.

After all that my query boils down to one thing...

• is it correct that I cannot pursue this refund request via my credit card company?

It's not a large amount of money, but it's more the principle of the issue, if I have to write off the loss I will but I'm not sure they should get away with taking my money for a flight I now can't take.

saltllama

Looking into this a bit more I think I need to attempt to get a refund using chargeback, as the amount was £88.50.

grumbler

For chargeback, there is 120 days' time limit, but it can start from the "expected service provision date" and, I think, the chargeback is doable in this case.