As customers awaiting refunds start to get carried away, TAP takes the issue by saying they have already refunded 679.8 million euros.
However, a quick search on social media is enough to find several people very unhappy with this 72.5% state-owned Portuguese airline. The news from Portugal talked to four of these people.
In 2019, Tânia bought two TAP tickets for March 2020, but the pandemic happened, her flights were canceled and she is still waiting for the refund. “I’ve sent many messages asking for my refund, but TAP is playing dead.”
“Although the European Union said airlines should either return the money or give a voucher, TAP never gave the option to return the money. The only thing that happened when I asked for a refund, on the TAP webpage they sent a voucher code! And guess what? I’m still trying to get my money back,” she said. Portuguese News.
In the same boat is Dan, who was coming to Lisbon for a vacation in the first quarter of 2021, but his flight was canceled.
“Their instructions for requesting a cash refund were so confusing that I ended up getting a voucher instead. I spent countless hours on the phone trying to get them to turn the voucher into a cash refund,” did he declare.
“On their cancellation message TAP said ‘click here to request a refund’ so I followed the instructions – it was in Portuguese so I had to translate it myself – The next day I I received a voucher, so I think the original post was very misleading. I’m still waiting.”
happy endings
Michael, an American citizen living in Brazil, was one of the lucky ones who got his money back, but not from TAP. “TAP was unwilling to refund me, but as I have a credit card, I contacted my bank and they refunded me. I was able to get my money back.”
“I understand that the airlines are in a difficult situation but if you are going to take someone’s money for a service then you have to make yourself available to talk to people, especially if you are going to change flight dates. They moved mine a day after. There was no way to make it happen,” he said.
On the other hand, in January 2020, Paul booked flights for four people and paid by bank transfer, which made it difficult to get a refund. However, Paul didn’t stop fighting until he got what he wanted.
“After 90 days, we still haven’t had a refund. After more hours of calling them, they just said it was taking longer because of the volume of refunds. It was clear on Twitter, Facebook and the forums that many other TAP passengers were in the same situation and that TAP did not reimburse anyone”
“I have decided to start a formal complaint process and take legal action if necessary. The first step was to file a complaint with the Book of Reclamações online. TAP has two weeks to respond, but they ignored the complaint. Therefore, about a month later, I contacted their industry regulator, ANAC, to take action. ANAC rejected me, basically saying it had nothing to do with them that the national airline they are supposed to regulate was clearly not complying with European legislation on refunds. So the whole complaint process in Portugal seems pointless, companies can just ignore complaints and regulators won’t act. I followed the EU justice commissioner. I explained the steps I had taken to get the refund via Portuguese consumer rights laws and the lack of response I had received from the Portuguese authorities.
“At that point, things started to change. I received a response from ANAC saying that they had contacted TAP and asked them to resolve the complaint. A few weeks later, we finally got our refunds,” Paul said..
TAP giving refunds
TAP recognizes that there is a problem due to the enormous pressure caused by border restrictions. However, TAP claims they are doing their best to figure it out.
“In recent months, we have seen an increase in the number of calls received. The airline has been working on its teams and technological tools to deal with these situations in a reasonable time. To get a real idea of the problem, before the pandemic, TAP was ready to handle about 20,000 contacts per month. After the pandemic, TAP started to receive about 200,000 contacts per month. Ten times more,” an official source said.
“TAP has reserved a significant portion of its budget each month for reimbursement payments and has worked hard to respond to all requests as quickly as possible. At the beginning of October, 98.8% of the claims had already been paid, representing a total value of 676.8 million euros,” the TAP source said.
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