united-states consumer-protection air-travel
Can an airline legally claim its tickets are feely changeable if their customer service can&#39;t be reached within some &quot;reasonable&quot; amount of time?
<p>For my last vacation, I bought a flight ticket from an airline. The ticket was changeable without any fee. However, to change it, I had to call the airline's customer support and nobody was picking up the phone within 3 hours.</p>
<p>This made me wonder: Are airlines allowed to claim that their tickets are feely changeable if their customer service can't be reached to change the ticket within some &quot;reasonable&quot; amount of time?</p>
<p>I am interested in the case that the ticket was purchased in the United States, and departing from the United States.</p>

<p>Airlines in the US are allowed to make this claim, since it is true, i.e. not deceptive. If an airline refused to make changes or as a practice made it impossible to make changes, there might be a potential action for deceptive advertising.</p>
<p>There is a separate question here, whether an airline has an obligation to refund money if &quot;technical difficulties&quot; make it impossible for them to process your claim in a timely manner. This <a href="https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/Notice_24hour_hold_final20130530_0.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">guidance document</a> from the DOT should lead you to check <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-II/subchapter-A/part-259" rel="nofollow noreferrer">14 CFR Part 259</a>, which confirms that the reservation can be cancelled within 24 hours. Nothing in the wording of the regulation suggests that this is limited to &quot;customers who succeed in cancelling&quot;. So perhaps they may believe that you failed to try to request a refund within the required time period, and will deny the refund on that basis. Then you file a complaint, and the DoT decides whether it is more likely that they were swamped, or that you didn't try to get a refund in a timely manner.</p>
