Consumer complaint received 2023-02-13
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems — Problem with rewards from credit card
Company: BARCLAYS BANK DELAWARE (AZ)

On XX/XX/XXXX my wife and I booked a trip to XXXX from XXXX, XXXX, using our Barclay 's Bank " Luxury Card '' credit card rewards program XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ). We redeemed XXXX points and paid {$1500.00} out of pocket for the trip. We reviewed the available options for hours prior to booking, specifically seeking the best possible flight that had a refundable ticket option. We paid an additional premium over the standard fair of roughly ~ {$200.00} per ticket for the refundable fare classes on both legs of the journey. The Luxury Card rewards program website " rewards terms of service '' state that " All reservations are final and non-refundable unless a refundable ticket is redeemed. Cardmembers who wish to cancel a reservation will forfeit their rewards redeemed for that reservation and may incur additional supplier fees. '' After reading this, we assumed that our refundable ticket would be indeed refundable. Little did we know or understand, the booking was completed by a third party with its own terms of service, which state that all bookings are nonrefundable. The URL showed XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX' so we had no reason to believe we were subject to a new set of terms and conditions. Ultimately, we had to cancel the flight due to my wife being pregnant with twins and being due to deliver earlier than expected ( which is also why we specifically booked refundable tickets ). I cancelled the flight directly on the airline 's website ( XXXX ), which is said I had to do in order to request a refund. XXXX issued us a flight credit to rebook a flight on their airline by end of XXXX ( which we have no intent to do and no use for this credit ). I completed their refund request form, following the instructions on the website. The refund request was subsequently denied and their refunds team said that the " travel agent '' had to request the refund on my behalf. I shared this information with the Luxury Card concierge agents whom I had been in contact with as well, in an effort to get the refund issued. The Luxury Card team issued me a case number and said they would look into it to get the refund and try to get us an exception to their policy of forfeiting points if a booking is cancelled. The case failed to produce any results, so I escalated to a supervisor on the phone. The supervisor informed me that the second ( return ) leg of the trip, which was booked on XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, was not a refundable fair type and that it was the reason XXXX wouldn't issue a refund for the booking. I asked how this was possible when I specifically paid more for the refundable fair, and he couldn't provide an answer. In fact, we wouldn't have even been able to select our seats on that flight had we not selected the " Flex '' class of service, which had " refunds '' listed in its included features with a green checkmark ( an example of this is shown in the attachments on a different flight ). The supervisor also couldn't explain why they sell " refundable '' tickets at a higher cost than normal tickets if their terms of service policy is to provide no refunds and supersedes any other conditions. He also couldn't explain how their policy of forfeiting points on cancelled trips also applied to the value of cash used in addition to points to complete a booking. This all seems highly suspicious and predatory. It's evident that they pocketed the additional premium we paid for the refundable tickets on the second leg of the journey ( first leg did show as refundable, despite not working ) when they booked the tickets on our behalf. The supervisor agreed with me that them selling " refundable '' ticket options was misleading and that he would escalate it internally for informational purposes, but still could not offer us a resolution.