Colombia Forum

fecherklyn
Joined 2015
Posts: 1401

1 year ago

New law, Airline refunds

1 year ago

I said I was curtailing my activity on EXPAT EXCHANGE, but my frustration has calmed down since then, and I think this news is worth reporting.

My wife and I were scheduled to fly away to a new sunset on January 26th 2023, but here we still are, once again cut off at the knees by a mix of Colombian bureaucracy and the Covid footsteps.

To be more precise, my wife has still been unable to renew her Colombian passport (details given in a post about 3 months ago), without which she obviously cannot travel internationally, AND the “newish” Decreto 482 del 2020, Articulo 17).

I describe Decreto 482 as “newish”, because although it is nearly 3 years old, very few people know about it – Travel Agents included.

We had to back out of our reserved flight last month because of the passport renewal problem, but we felt comfortable because we were confident we were fully protected by the flight cancellation conditions. The fact is, our health conditions are nowadays are so haphazard we can never be absolutely certain will fly on a finite day, so accordingly, we pay extra to avail ourselves of bullet-proof cancellation refund rates. Example, our 26/01/2023 return tickets cost COP 19,997,186, plus an extra COP 12,848,518 for the gold plated, supplementary cancellation refund provision and an earlier flight change. Expensive Non?

However, all of the above has proven of little importance in the face of Decreto 482:
"
El artículo 17 del Decreto 482 del 2020, por el cual se dictan medidas sobre prestación del servicio público de transporte durante la emergencia por coronavirus (covid-19), dispuso que en los eventos en que las aerolíneas reciban solicitudes de retracto, desistimiento y otras circunstancias relacionadas con la solicitud de reembolso podrán realizar, durante el periodo que dure la emergencia y hasta por un año más, rembolsos a los usuarios en servicios prestados por la misma aerolínea.

En este sentido, precisó la Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio, en ejercicio de sus facultades jurisdiccionales no puede acoger pretensiones encaminadas al reintegro del dinero pagado por unos tiquetes aéreos, en el marco de un litigio. De acuerdo con la normativa señalada, las empresas de servicios aéreos comerciales podrán realizar rembolsos a los usuarios en servicios prestados por la misma aerolínea"
.
In short, the airlines can now avoid all cash refunds by enforcing a form of credit note refund, irrespective of whether you like it , or not. The airline concerned, and out travel agent both failed to mention this new law at the time of our reservation, but we now understand there are hundreds of other persons in Medellin facing the same problem. We dis suggest to our travel agent that, next time, we would reserve the lowest tariff flights, and then upgrade them a couple of days prior to the flight if we felt well enough. Forget it; even this ruse no longer works - now you can only make upgrades from specific higher rate tariffs.

Is my memory correct? Wasn't it a pleasure to fly at one time?

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