Consumer complaint received 2022-10-11
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: NY
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement
Sub-issue: Credit card company isn't resolving a dispute about a purchase on your statement

Complaint:
I need your help with resolving my dispute with AmEx ( my credit card company ) and/or merchant. The merchant never issued a refund on the dispute- as promised in their settlement offer, and as it's mentioned in their Refund policy online : " Trip cancellation refunds Voluntary cancellation refund If youre the one who cancels the trip, you can choose between XXXX Credit and a monetary refund via the payment method you used to book your trip. '' And AmEx seems to be failing to thoroughly investigate the details on the dispute and keeps sending me rejections with the same irrelevant responses from Merchant, regardless of facts I've been submitting to them. Outrageous! 
I disputed this amount with American Express multiple times already, explained the circumstances, provided all supporting evidence per their request, but AmEx keeps rejecting the dispute and IGNORE the important facts. They once mentioned " COVID '' (?!??! ) issue that disqualifies me from obtaining the refund, which had nothing to do with my situation, no idea where AmEx got that from. Then they rejected based on " insufficient facts '', which is completely false as they had had all the info by then from my prior calls/letters. 

And their recent rejection included the same bogus copies of my flight tickets allegedly from XXXX that XXXX shared at the 1st round of dispute. ONCE AGAIN, AmEX FAILED INVESTIGATE properly and consider all the facts of the dispute I shared with them and closed it after receiving irrelevant documentation from the merchant as if any of the supporting documentation I submitted to them didn't exist. 


The matter stems from the situation that arose in XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX  when I used XXXX  to book airplane tickets. 

Some of my immediate family members residing in XXXX my sister and her only daughter, my only niece like thousands of other XXXX were caught off-guard by the unexpected attack by XXXX and were forced to live in hiding and deprivation for weeks, trying to preserve their lives for as long as they can, unable to escape to safety. I cant express all the fear and pain Ive felt for those family members, while feeling completely helpless as there was literally nothing I could do to save or help them. When a lucky opportunity arose for them to leave XXXX without any guarantees, by hitchhiking, they were willing to jump on it without second thoughts. All they needed to do was to cross the closest border- between XXXX and XXXX. From there they could travel safely to XXXX and then unite with me here, in the United States as refugees. 

As soon as I heard of this chance for them to flee and survive, I immediately started looking for flights from XXXXt closest international airport to where they were coming from. They couldnt have flown directly into the USA at that time, so the best arrangements I could make for them then was to get them to fly out of XXXX to XXXX and then to XXXX, where I was planning to meet them and help them obtain refugee asylum in the United States. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I booked their XXXX XXXX XXXX tickets online and paid {$2900.00} with my American Express Platinum Card via XXXX. The flight out of XXXX was scheduled for XX/XX/XXXX, and my family had only a week to get to the airport from XXXX. It took them almost XXXX days to reach the XXXX border by hitchhiking. When they finally got there on XX/XX/XXXX, they witnessed a huge line of fleeing fellow XXXX trying the cross the border. They were told by the volunteers helping organize the process that the number of refugees is so vast that the border patrol cant process all these persons fast enough. My sister and niece were placed in the refugee camp right there for the night. In the morning of XX/XX/XXXX they were told that the line was moving very slowly and with so many people ahead of them the soonest theyll be able to cross the border was at least in a week. My sister was devastated and called me crying saying that there was no way for her to cross the border any time soon because of that huge line and she had no idea how many more days itd take her to get to the airport. She was desperate and felt like her hopes for a safe passage had just been crashed. After I finally managed to calm her down, I knew that I had to cancel the plane tickets as obviously circumstances had changed and there was nothing we could do to expedite her timely arrival at the XXXX airport. 

When I called XXXX right after on XX/XX/XXXX ( which was more than 3 full days before the scheduled flight ), I explained the situation to them in details and asked to grant me a credit for the full amount as Ill need to re-book the flights as soon as they actually get to the airport - or give me a refund for these flights. I was not certain of the date my family would be able to get to the airport and hence, I was not able to re-book the trip at that point, but I was willing to get a flight credit in the full amount from XXXX, so I could book a new trip when I had certainty with the dates of travel. Honestly, considering that I was notifying them way in advance of 24 hours before the flight ( and their website required a minimum of 24 hours of advance notice ) and that it was a pure force majeure event WAR- I expected their cooperation and understanding. However, the agent was completely disinterested in the details of the cancellation and said that shed be happy to cancel the tickets and issue the refund of XXXX. I thought I misheard her first and asked to repeat the amount. She did. It was still only XXXX I was shocked and rather insulted to hear that minuscular amount of the refund for almost a {$3000.00} charge! ... I tried to reason with her, reminded that it was clearly a force majeure event war- but she remained deaf to my situation. I asked her to connect me with a supervisor. She refused by saying that they wouldnt tell me anything new that she hadnt mentioned and wouldnt approve a larger refund amount as it was the amount allowed per their internal policy. I mentioned the policy cited on their website, and she replied she didnt know what I was talking about and had to rely on her internal guidelines for refunds. I was very disappointed with the outcome and the quality of customer dis-service I got from XXXX, so I contacted AmEx to dispute the charge, and here 's the nonsense with the dispute began .... 



PLEASE help me with getting this disputed amount written off by the creditor - AMEX - or force them to obtain my refund from the merchant. Attached are additional records of proof of my attempts to contact the merchant to resolve the matter, as well as the SETTLEMENT OFFER by the merchant ( see XXXX XXXX ( XXXX XXXX  XXXX Respectfully yours, XXXX XXXX.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief