Background
When it comes to booking flights, many airlines follow a policy that allows travelers to make changes or cancellations to their tickets within 24 hours of purchase, free of charge. According to the US Department of Transportation’s regulations, airlines must allow passengers to cancel or change their flights within 24 hours of booking without penalty, provided the flight is at least seven days away for flights to, from, or within the United States. I recently had an interesting experience with Iberia, a major Spanish airline, about this policy. I was surprised to learn that Iberia charges fees for US flight changes within 24 hours of purchase.
My Issue: Iberia Charges Fees Within 24 After Purchasing
I had booked an Iberia flight through their website with points. Within a few hours, I realized I had booked the wrong dates. I thought that would be fine, and that it would be easy to make a change since it was within 24 hours of my booking. So, I logged into my booking on the website and tried to make a change to my flight.
Here, I was met with a roadblock. The website simply wouldn’t allow me to make any alterations online. It said I had to call customer service to make any changes. Alright, no worries I thought. However, once I got connected to a representative, they informed me that, since I was attempting to make changes to a ticket purchased in the United States, the fee for phone support would be USD 40.00 (or they mentioned it would be 25 EUR if I called the Spanish line). They said if I did it online, I wouldn’t have to pay the fee, but the issue was that the website told me I had to call support, and I couldn’t modify it online.
At first, I found their response somewhat perplexing. When I clarified that the website was not allowing me to make the changes, the representative said there was nothing they could do, and that I would need to pay the fee to change or cancel. I ended up paying the fee, but it just seemed unfair. I reached out for a response by filling out a contact form online, and the response was pretty generic with a link to the service fees, which states that changes/cancellations made over the phone are subject to fees (which the phone agent told me about).
The Verdict
Overall, I found the whole situation to be a bit unfair. Iberia technically allows you to make free changes/cancellations within 24 hours. But, since you cannot make the changes online, there is a service fee for getting it changed/canceled over the phone. If I learned anything, it is to double-check my dates before making any bookings in case some fees are tacked on to changing or canceling the ticket!
Have you tried canceling a flight on Iberia within 24 hours? How was your experience? Comment below!
Cheers,
Ty
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This is a violation of USDOT regulations, and does not allow exceptions for non-US airlines. It’s clearly stated under USDOT regulations for customer refunds. File a complaint with the DOT.
DOT complaint – literally a short paragraph. “I booked a ticket on Iberia.com from the United States to Spain (conf ABCDEF). x hours later, I attempted to change it. Iberia would not let me change it online and insisted I had to pay a $40 fee to change my flight within 24 hours of booking and we’ll more than 7 days in advance of the flight.”
Would make good content for the blog, even if you wouldn’t otherwise feel the $40 is worth fighting over.