Finnair desperately want me to take a voucher refund

The Flight Detective
a white airplane flying in the sky

Airlines are in dire straits at the moment as virtually nobody is flying. When your flight is cancelled, some airlines are offering a cash refund, some a voucher refund and others both.

My forward bookings included flights with British Airways and Finnair, which of course are now cancelled. With BA, I applied for a cash refund and received the money back exactly two weeks later. With the Nordic airline, it’s another story.

Please Take The Voucher Refund

Notification of my flight cancellation arrived on 26 March and I applied for a cash refund the following day. At the time an e-mail arrived confirming my application and apologising for the processing time of up to one month.

Considering the amount of work they must have, I am quite happy to patiently wait for the cash. However, since then I have received two e-mails attempting to convince me to take a voucher instead, the first arriving April Fools Day.

The important note in that communication is that refunds are now delayed further to eight weeks. As an incentive, you get 10% extra back with the voucher and it arrives in half the time. Curious. Of course, I decided not to take it.

Just one week later on 7 April, I received another e-mail from Finnair. This time it was a bit more to the point and I have extra time to make a decision.

It seems to me that perhaps not many people took the original offer. Shorter, more to the point and with another date, I wonder if it will be more successful.

Overall Thoughts

I’m very curious about how many people are actually taking a voucher refund. Hopefully once all of this is over there will be some statistics on this.

Interestingly, the second message sent by Finnair doesn’t mention anything about cash refunds. People do tend to read things that are short and sweet so maybe leaving that out and staying focused on the main message will get a better result.

Are you team voucher or team cash refund? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Family Flys Free

I’ve been putting off calling them about a canceled flight. Was finally told by Chase (Expedia) that they need to authorize the refund to them to be issued to me. So frustrating. I would consider a voucher if it was 50% or 100% more. But 10%?? Hard pass.

Tom

My Finnair voucher arrived today – took just over a month (and two weeks after they told me it had been issued!) To use it, you need to ring their customer service if your flight originates from a country which doesn’t use the Euro, which is the case with mine (UK), they then created a reservation for me, sent me the booking reference, and then there was a ‘pay now’ option, where I input the voucher code. Done! I’m a school teacher and have set holidays and wanted to take a pretty much identical holiday to my Easter one that… Read more »

Peter

I believe every airline prefers customers to take the vouchers. I think you were lucky with British Airways. We had flights booked on BA around this time to South Africa, BA’s web site did read “refund/voucher” but clicking it only offered voucher. Luckily I read online that if one disables Javascript before clicking it, it will go to the refund page — and got my refund in couple of days. That trip was also to keep our status with BA — now that we cannot really fly anywhere and BA hasn’t done anything to extend the frequent flyer status like… Read more »

Gary

Iam a former Finnish citizen. Don’t ever trust this company. Then when you want to have flights the vouchers are not valid. “Sorry computer error, try later this year or next?” Finnair had sucked their own citizens decades. CASH ONLY!

Ryan

It’s really about household financials at this point for me. If I could spare the cash, I’d consider it – although 10% isn’t much incentive. Upwards of 20% becomes more and more of a no-brainer. Unfortunately some people need the cash and need it quickly. Being granted a refund could change someone’s life in these difficult times. It’s quite unfortunate that the airlines can’t handle refunds as quickly as some people need it. What’s worse, some hotels are refusing refunds despite the situation (Design Hotels, despite Marriott’s outstanding COVID-19 policies and leadership). Right now I think we should all be… Read more »

Johny

If you like the airline, take voucher. Simple. No difference to you, big difference to airline.

[…] Finnair Desperately Want Me To Take A Voucher Refund by Travel Update. […]

huey judy

A voucher refund? You will either get a refund of your money or a voucher toward a future trip. Inexperienced travellers are confused enough already with those two terms, so combining them in a headline is kinda counter-productive.

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