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Marian Houk’s problem with Swiss International Air Lines is a cautionary tale about rescheduling your flight, corporate stubbornness, and failure—my failure.

That’s right, and I dropped the ball on this one (but I didn’t lose the game). I’ll explain in a minute.

Houk was flying from Denver to Larnaca, Cyprus, on Swiss. Knowing that her itinerary might change, she carefully booked a flexible and fully refundable fare.

And it did — several times. By the time she contacted our advocacy organization, Swiss owed her $2,004, and the airline showed no signs of being willing to pay her.

“I want my fully flexible and refundable fare refunded,” she told me.

Is that even possible? Houk’s case raises a few questions about what to do when a company refuses to discuss a case and even what to do when a consumer advocate goes into radio silence.

“I lost confidence in Swiss”

Houk’s itinerary became unnecessarily complicated almost immediately. Although her final destination was Larnaca, she discovered she could only book part of her flight—Denver to Zürich —online. Ultimately, she had to book the last leg of her flight by calling Swiss.

The Swiss charter company, Edelweiss, operated her flights.

Houk changed her flights. Swiss—or should I say Edelweiss—kept up with the first change, offering her an $80 refund because her new flights were cheaper.

Then she changed the tickets again, altering only the segment from Denver to Zürich.

At that point, the whole booking began to unravel.

Swiss promised another refund of $128, but she never received it.

“I never received an e-ticket for the final itinerary,” she says.

She could not check her itinerary online, and she had no way of asking for an upgrade. She didn’t even know if she could fly, saying, “I lost confidence in Swiss.”

Houk was so exasperated with the process that she canceled the entire itinerary on the day of her departure and asked for a full refund. However, the money was still missing several months later, and Swiss wasn’t answering her emails.

It was time to ask for help from Elliott Advocacy.

How not to handle a reschedule for your airline ticket

As I already mentioned, this is a case study in how not to handle a rescheduling. You can easily confuse an airline.

First, make two reservations—one through its charter carrier and another through the regular airline. With any luck, the companies will use separate reservations systems, making it difficult to connect the reservations.

To make things interesting, make one reservation online and another by phone.

Change your schedule. Then change it again, but this time only one segment- to keep them on their toes.

Finally, cancel the entire reservation after the airline has issued two partial refunds.

And apparently, that’s how you confuse a company even as well-organized as Swiss. Because there’s no question Swiss was confused.

How do you book a multileg, refundable airline ticket?

There’s a right way to book a multileg, refundable airline ticket. You actually have a few options.

Book it yourself

If you book a ticket yourself, use an airline that serves the destination with its own metal (that is, it operates all the flights with its own planes). Ideally, this would be a single flight. You can make a fully refundable reservation online, and there will be no confusion when you have to change plans.

But in the real world, it’s not always that simple. You may have to book a connecting flight with another airline. Try to do this with a code-share partner, and make sure the tickets are connected- in other words, on the same itinerary. The best way is to book everything through the same airline simultaneously.

Use a travel advisor.

A competent travel agent can ensure you have the best flexible tickets and can handle any changes. You may have to pay an extra booking fee, but it’s worth it if it’s a complicated ticket. Your agent can also help if the airline promises a refund but fails to follow through. Let’s say they know people on the inside. They can take care of things for you.

But Houk’s case was about to take a strange and unfortunate twist.

Swiss: We won’t talk about this case.

I felt terrible for Houk. Sure, she had made a few rookie mistakes when she booked her ticket to Cypress, but should she have lost $2,004 because of them? I didn’t think so.

So I reached out to Swiss. I received an answer that is new to me:

Thank you very much for your enquiry and your interest in our company. We will, of course, look into the case as quickly as possible. However, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we require the consent of the affected passengers to provide you with more information.

Consent? You mean, like the form every reader must fill out before they ask my advocacy team for help.

No, Swiss had its form, and it demanded to see a copy of Houk’s ID.

And here’s where the case went off the rails. I asked Swiss to pass the case to the right people, but the airline refused, saying I needed to send more paperwork. I didn’t want to trouble Houk with a request for her ID, which seems a little creepy, so we were at a stalemate.

As a side note, many European companies are using GDPR as an excuse not to engage with their customers. We have a growing list of airlines that ignore our requests. However, that doesn’t stop me from writing about them.

It turns out Swiss ignored its request for more paperwork. It did indeed send her case along to the correct department to review.

A bizarre ending to this Swiss refund case

A month after I contacted Swiss, I heard back from Houk.

“Just to let you know, Swiss International Air Lines has now refunded, in several different credits to my American Express card, the full refund amount due,” she said.

Good news, right? Well, not exactly.

“I can’t know why you responded to me and then ceased to respond to my request for your help,” she added. But since you did reply once, I am writing to let you know that I managed the rest using your method.”

Huh?

I checked my emails. I had responded to her twice—once to ask her for more information, which is standard, and once to let her know that I had contacted Swiss.

It looked as if my responses had gone to her spam folder, which is quite common. But what’s less common is that her follow-up requests had also gone to my spam folder — which is why she thought I was ignoring her.

Houk also said that she called me. I screen all my calls and read the transcript to see if I need to respond. I didn’t connect the calls to her case, which I should have.

The takeaway from this Swiss refund case? Where do I even start?

Houk’s case shows how easy it is to confuse an airline, even a Swiss airline. (Technically, it’s a German airline owned by Lufthansa. But still.)

It suggests that you have to be careful when booking a complex itinerary because it’s easy to break the system. And if you do, you might be the one who has to pay the price.

Finally, there’s the takeaway for me: I need to screen my calls with greater care. I should have circled back with Houk after Swiss told me it would not help, even though it eventually did. After this, I will always check my spam folder.