Q: My family and I took a Princess cruise, and I booked my airline tickets through the cruise line's EZair program. Our return flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Denver was on Southwest Airlines, and it happened in December during the airline's service debacle. Southwest canceled our flight. We had to return on another airline.
Southwest Airlines refunded Princess in early January for all four tickets. But I have not received the money yet. I've sent emails to the vice president of guest relations, the director of customer service and the president of the cruise line, but have received no reply. Can you help us get our $983 back?
A: Princess should have refunded you promptly for the Southwest Airlines flights. After all, the airline had fully refunded the cruise line after its service meltdown at the end of last year.
The EZair program is Princess' air-inclusive program, and it offers certain guarantees that your airline can't. Those include the ability to cancel airline tickets up to 45 days before your departure with no fees. Princess also says you can "rest easy" that you'll make your cruise if it's delayed or canceled on the day of travel with same-day-arrival protection. So it makes sense to look into EZair.
Unfortunately, for the type of tickets you booked, the EZair terms stated that your flights were completely nonrefundable. So technically, Princess was following its rules.
But rules are made to be broken, especially during an extraordinary event like the Southwest Airlines service disruption.
Princess did respond to you initially, claiming that you are only entitled to vouchers that can be used with Southwest directly. "Southwest did not issue any refunds to Princess Cruises," the representative said.
However, Southwest said it had issued full refunds during the service disruption and that it sent the money to Princess.
