Issues of refund of cancelled flight - months delay. Suggestions?

[organicfarmer]

I had a cancelled EU to USA with Poland connection flight with LOT Airlines in March 2020 (due to all flights cancelled into Poland). I submitted my refund request by phone to LOT call center (only hour or so on hold). The CSR submitted my info, told me refund will take time to process. I asked for a transaction number for the refund and I was told there was none. So over 2 months pass and no refund. I call customer service, wait on hold for an hour, and with no answer I hang up. I proceed to use the now available web portal for refunds and exchanges. Goes smoothly and I get information complete with a message about how refund will be issued when processed.

Now that entry is almost 6 weeks ago, 15 weeks from initial contact, and no refund issued nor any other type of correspondence. No doubt these are unprecedented times. Is this how slow I should expect it to take? Any suggestions when or how to take further steps?

This is my first cancelled flight so I don't know what to expect in the best of times either.

[bartleby]

Seems to be typical. My flight to SFO in April with Swiss was cancelled and I received my refund notification just this week after three months! Usually airlines must refund within a week if the flight was cancelled. I did some research on the internet and it seems that all carriers behave in that way right now.

[organicfarmer]

A positive update to this thread. 4 months after filing for the cancelled flight, I have now been reimbursed.

[bartleby]

I am waiting for another refund for a flight that would have taken me to Chicago next week. Hope that they are a bit faster this time with the money...

[bchaplin]

I had a difficult time with Delta. I'd bought two international tickets for July that had to be cancelled. First, i had to wait until THEY made a substantial change to the flight, to qualify for a cash refund rather than a voucher. Then, it took hours on the phone, but they finally granted me a refund. So I waited. And waited. And waited. They'd told me it would be a month, but it turned into more.

Finally, I tried to call back, and couldn't even get through. What made me angriest was that the automated system took my frequent flier number and THEN told me that no one would be able to talk to me (clearly, they were sorting people based on status).

So I reached out to my credit card company, explained the situation, and within minutes they'd refunded the entire ticket price back to my card. So far, Delta has not disputed the chargeback. I don't typically do chargebacks, but prefer to deal directly with merchants. In this circumstance, I felt that I'd done my due diligence already and had no more patience.

[bartleby]

It seems that the refund process speeds up: This time it was just two weeks between the cancellation and the refund notification for my Swiss flight! That's almost back to normal were it should be a maximum of one week.