My Parrot has lousy diction: a blog by Jess Zimbabwe

Last week, I got an email about a $20 event ticket that I’d purchased.

“The event host has decided this will be a free event.  You will hold on to the ticket you already have or it will still be in will-call for you.  Please call us with your credit card number (970) 920-5770 between the hours of 9am to 5pm so that we can issue a refund.”

“Cool,” I thought, “I’m saving $20.” But when I called the above number (from work, since they were only open business hours), I got a message indicating a 30-40 minute hold time to speak with an agent. “Not worth it,” I thought and hung up. I responded to the email and asked if I could call after the festival, hold times would be shorter. They wrote back, saying they preferred to take care of it beforehand, and offered two people’s direct lines. (Neither answered.) Finally, I wrote back that they could issue my refund by check to my mailing address.

Then, on the plane ride on the way home from the festival, the flight attendant accidentally over-charged my husband’s credit card by $3 for some snacks we’d bought on board. She apologized, and offered to give us other snacks in exchange, because she couldn’t process a refund.

So, the two nearby experiences make me wonder:

Why shouldn’t refunding a credit card be at least as easy as the initial charging of it was?

If I’d paid by cash or check for the ticket, I wouldn’t have wasted my time on three long distance calls trying to get a card refunded; they would have without question issued my refund by mailed check. If we’d bought the snacks with cash, we’d have three more dollars cash instead of an extra, unwanted bag of peanut m&m’s.

Why is this so difficult?