Flight Ticket Refund: OTA Refusal & Legal Notice

One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.

Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.

TL;DR: Yes. A flight ticket refund promised by an agent and then denied is a service deficiency, not a misunderstanding. If the call promising the money was recorded, that recording is evidence you can point to, and a consumer complaint under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 is the right route after a written legal notice.

Flight Ticket Refund: What the Law Actually Says

The booking itself was routine. Two tickets, Pune to Colombo and back, arranged in early August by Suresh Kulkarni's colleague Prakash for a trip in late October. Total fare, roughly ₹19,850.

The trouble was a hyphen. Every domestic ID Suresh had, PAN card, Aadhaar, voter card, showed his name as "S Kulkarni". His new passport spelled it out: Suresh Kulkarni. He told the travel portal before the passport arrived. They asked him to wait and email the copy. He did. IndiGo updated the outbound leg the same day. Air India would not touch the return.

So the ticket had to go. On 7 September, a support agent told him on a recorded call that cancelling the return leg would get him ₹11,640 within 10 to 14 working days. He agreed on that call. The agent cancelled it on the spot.

Five days later the automated mail landed. Booking cancelled. No refund applicable as per policy.

Then the script started. Calls on 12, 15 and 18 September. Same line every time: recordings under review, give us another 24 to 48 hours. No callback, no escalation, nothing in writing.

That's when he approached the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao. A legal notice followed, with the recorded assurance as its spine. Advocate Sudhir Rao's familiarity with how consumer commissions read these OTA disputes helped the client recover the promised amount without a full trial.

Key Facts of the Case

• Return tickets booked through an online travel agent for about ₹19,850 for one passenger.
• Name on the passenger
• Name on the passenger's ID papers was abbreviated on every government document he held; the passport showed it in full. The outbound airline corrected the booking, the return airline refused.
• The return leg was cancelled on 7 September after a support call in which the agent promised ₹11,640 within 10 to 14 working days. The client agreed on that call and the agent cancelled the booking during it.
• Five days later an automated mail arrived saying no refund was applicable as per policy.
• Follow-up calls on 12, 15 and 18 September produced the same answer — recordings under review, wait another 24 to 48 hours. Nothing came in writing.
• The recording of the 7 September call was preserved; that is the only reason this matter is worth pursuing at all.
• No amount was refunded. A legal notice was issued, and the amount was eventually paid.

One caveat before the law. Everything above comes from the client's account and the documents he kept. The portal's own terms and the fare rules attached to the return leg may say something different, and we did not see the agent's internal notes. Where the two collide, the terms usually win — unless the call changes the picture, which is what happened here.

Can I Get a Flight Ticket Refund If the Agent Promised It and Then Denied It?

Usually yes, and the promise is the whole point of the case. Under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, a service provider who assures a refund and then withdraws it has done two things wrong: held on to the money, and made you waste a fortnight finding out. The Act calls that a deficiency in service, and depending on how the assurance was given, it can also be an unfair trade practice.

The question a consumer commission asks is not what the airline's refund policy says in the abstract. It is what the person handling your booking told you, and whether you acted on it. That is why a fare rule saying "non-refundable" does not automatically end the matter.

What "deficiency in service" means in a booking dispute

Refund of air tickets booked through an agent is a service. Once the agent collects the fare, the agent owes you a duty to process cancellation and refund correctly, and to tell you the truth about what you will get back. A wrong assurance followed by silence, and then a flat denial, is short of the standard a consumer is entitled to expect.

Two separate duties tend to get confused here. The airline's duty is to refund what the fare rules allow. The agent's duty is to pass on accurate information and to not pocket the difference. Your complaint may lie against both, or against whichever one broke its side of the arrangement.

The recording is the case. Everything else is background

If the call was recorded and the assurance is audible and clear — the amount, the timeline, the cancellation — that recording does most of the work. The agent is then not defending a refund policy. He is explaining why he said what he said and then did not do it.

Electronic records have to be produced properly. Under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, an electronic record generally needs a certificate from the person in possession of the device or the person who managed its operation, giving the details of the device and how the record was made. In practice, for a call recording on a phone, that means a short signed certificate along with the file, a transcript, and the original device available if the commission wants to see it. Skipping the certificate is the most common way a good recording gets thrown out.

Who do you sue — the agent or the airline?

Look at who made the promise and who took the money. In most online travel agent disputes, the ticket was issued by the airline but the booking, the cancellation and the refund representation all came from the agent. The complaint ordinarily goes against the agent, with the airline as a second opposite party if the refund was to flow through it. Naming the wrong party is fixable — commissions routinely allow amendment — but it costs you a hearing or two.

There is also a parallel route on the airline side. The sector regulator's passenger charter and grievance portal exist for refund complaints against carriers, and a complaint there is quick and free. It does not get you compensation, and it does not bind the agent. It is worth doing for the paper trail, not as a substitute.

Two years, and the clock starts at the refusal

A consumer complaint has to be filed within two years of the cause of action. In these cases the cause of action is usually the date the refund was denied in writing — the automated mail, or the last written refusal — not the date you booked. If two years have already gone, all is not lost: the commission has power to condone delay if you can show sufficient cause, but you should assume that is an uphill argument and not build your plan around it.

Where to file, and what it costs in time and money

A claim of this size goes to the District Commission. Under the 2019 Act you can file where you live or where you work for gain, which means you are not forced to travel to the agent's city. Filing is online through the e-Daakhil portal, and there is a filing fee prescribed by rules, scaled to the value of the claim — check the current figure on the commission's site or the portal itself, because it changes.

On timing, be realistic. The commission issues notice after admission; the opposite party ordinarily gets about thirty days to file its reply, and you get a chance to file a rejoinder. The Act encourages referral to mediation, and a surprising number of these cases settle at that stage, precisely because the other side has now seen the recording. Contested matters run into months. Hearings are frequently by video conference, so a Pune consumer is not necessarily travelling to Delhi.

The legal notice comes first, and it is not a formality

A written notice giving fifteen days to pay is standard. It does three things: it fixes a date of refusal for limitation, it makes the opposite party commit to a position in writing, and it often produces the money without any filing. In this matter it did. Send it to the registered address of the company, not just the support email, and keep the postal proof.

What to Gather Before You Send Anything

• The booking confirmation, with the ticket numbers and the fare breakup.
• The cancellation confirmation, and the automated "no refund" mail if there is one.
• The call recording, transferred off the phone rather than left on it, with a transcript and a certificate under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.
• The bank or card statement showing the original debit — this is how you prove what you paid and that nothing came back.
• The agent's terms and the fare rules for the cancelled leg, so nobody is surprised by them later.
• Your complaint numbers and the dates of every follow-up call.
• A one-page chronology: date, event, who said what. Commissions read chronologies.

If you paid by credit card, ask your bank about a chargeback at the same time. Card networks run on tight windows — often measured in months from the transaction, not from the denial — and banks usually want a written refusal from the merchant. It is a parallel remedy, not a substitute, and it does not stop the two-year clock.

Frequently Asked Questions