On August 21st, 2024, I purchased a flight ticket to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, scheduled for December 30th, 2024, through a company called Trip.com. However, to my surprise, I did not receive any confirmation, e-ticket, or itinerary after completing the purchase. The payment was made via my PayPal account. Concerned about the lack of communication, I contacted PayPal on the following day, August 22nd, to report that I had not received the product I paid for and requested that a dispute be initiated between myself and the seller. PayPal agreed and informed me that they would wait for a response from the seller. Trip.com eventually responded, providing what they called “evidence” of having sent the ticket to my email. However, I disputed this, as I had not received any such communication from them. PayPal then escalated the case for further investigation. After their review, it was revealed that Trip.com had made an error when sending the ticket: instead of using my correct email address (which ends with outlook.com), they sent it to “utlook.com.” As a result, I never received the ticket, a fact that was acknowledged by the PayPal representative I spoke with over the phone. Despite this confirmation, I was shocked when, a few days later, PayPal ruled in favour of the seller, rejecting my claim. This was particularly surprising given the clear evidence of the email error from Trip.com. I continued to contact PayPal, leading them to reopen and close the case multiple times. Finally, I managed to speak directly with Trip.com. They too acknowledged their mistake regarding the email address but informed me that the ticket had been cancelled as of September 3rd, 2024. It is important to note that I had not requested the cancellation of this ticket—Trip.com did so on their own accord. To make matters worse, Trip.com stated that, due to the cancellation, I was not eligible for a full refund. According to their policies, they could only offer a partial refund of £309 out of the original £614 ticket price. Despite the fact that the entire issue stemmed from an error on their part, Trip.com was unwilling to consider a full refund, which I found to be extremely unfair. Their approach failed to account for the inconvenience and stress caused by their mistake and offered no real resolution to the problem.
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