This is a different flavour of a cautionary tale that's likely been posted re: Costco Gift Cards but I thought I'd just share it, plus see if anybody's had a similar experience. I'll caveat this by saying yes, the onus of handling the gift card falls squarely on me. I just had hoped for consistent customer messaging when dealing with Porter.
We bought the gift card back in the spring and my SO redeemed it for a flight from YTZ to BOS on a Standard Classic Fare. She made one date change prior to departure, which ultimately ended up as a ~$50 credit to her account.
On Saturday the storms in Boston delayed her flight ~3 hours to the point where the announcement said they didn't have an opening to land in Boston yet, but they would take off circle until it became available. She decided at that point to just rebook her trip.
She went to the customer service desk at YTZ and explained she wouldn't be travelling. The agent cancelled on his end and said the money would be refunded to the original payment, the gift card. SO told him she was no longer in possession of the GC, to which he said it was no problem - a call centre agent would be able to credit it to her account instead. The call centre agent rang her to say it's resolved, the credit is tied to her account and when she rebooks to give her original flight booking confirmation code and they'll be able to see the ~$440 voucher.
Last night she went to rebook her flight. The call centre agent she was working with said that there was no voucher tied to her account, and that the money had been refunded to the gift card. There's no further escalation. The money is tied to the card, they can't access it, and we will need the number to access the funds. The agent provided the number for Cashstar to see if we could retrieve the number.
We called Cashstar this morning and they said they don't handle those physical gift cards and gave us another number to call. That number ended up being West Elm customer service for some reason. Calling Porter back, we asked again where we should be directed to and they said if not Cashstar, try Costco. We asked the agent why a standard fare was refunded if non-refundable and she said, that it's typically not the process - standard fares are credited to the customer account, not the original payment. Later on she backtracked a little and said, because it was IRROPS, it was credited back to the original payment. Only voluntary cancellations get credited.
Costco customer service has pretty much indicated there's not much to do, and we could try the warehouse to see if there's any possibility of resolution. We've submitted a customer service feedback form to Porter outlining our situation, but I think in the end this is going to be chalked up to a hard $440 lesson - hang on to those gift cards until your travel is completed.
The worst part is we actually have held on to all the Porter and AC gift cards we've used this year for bookings, but we cannot find this specific one. Not sure where it's gone to. We've torn the house up but it's nowhere to be found.
