When Frontier Airlines fails to send Marcus Mann a confirmation for his airline ticket, he tries to find out what went wrong. After losing $583, he’s not getting any closer to the truth.
Question
I booked a roundtrip flight from Dallas to Denver on Frontier Airlines recently. Frontier charged my wife’s credit card $583 on the same day.
I never received a confirmation email. Frontier does not have a way to call anyone — there’s no customer service phone number — so I emailed the airline. I received a message from a reservations specialist the next day, asking for my flight details. I provided them, but I never heard from her again.
I continued emailing her but never received a response or anything from her or Frontier Airlines. I found a phone number that I thought was for Frontier, but when I called it, they put me on hold for 15 minutes.
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A person came back on the line and said they were in the “queue” with Frontier and needed my full credit card number because they “knew Frontier would need that information.” That’s when I knew it was a scam, and I hung up.
I decided to drive to the airport to try and speak with a ticket agent. I just needed our confirmation number, which is required to check in. But there were no Frontier agents at the airport.
As a last-ditch effort, I tried to dispute the charges on my wife’s credit card. But her bank sided with Frontier.
I would like to be refunded $583. I never received a confirmation email for the flight and was not able to take the flight. Can you help? — Marcus Mann, Sugar Land, Texas
Answer
Frontier should have sent you a flight confirmation after charging your wife’s credit card. If it didn’t, it should have at least responded to your emails by sending you a confirmation. I think your ultimate solution — a credit card dispute — made perfect sense. Your airline charged you but didn’t send you a ticket.
How can you tell if you have an airline ticket?
Airline tickets are slippery. You may think you have one, but don’t count on it. Here are a few questions you should ask:
- Do you have a confirmation number? A confirmation, also called a record locator or PNR, is a six-digit alphanumeric code given to each reservation. Don’t have one? Then you probably don’t have a ticket.
- Do you have an email from your airline? Airlines send confirmation emails within minutes of booking. No email? Check your spam folder. If you still don’t have one, you need to contact your air carrier.
- Did your payment go through? A pending charge isn’t enough. Make sure it’s been processed.
If you answer no to any of these, call your airline to confirm your reservation. Make sure you get your record locator and check it online. You can also check your airline app or frequent flier account. Your itinerary should be listed there, too. If it’s there, you should be good to go.
Pro tip: Be careful of third-party sites, which may confirm a flight that doesn’t exist. Always, always get it directly from the source. Finally, try to check in 24 hours before your departure, and if you can’t, reach out to your airline directly. You might not have a valid ticket.
What happened to your Frontier ticket?
I checked with Frontier, and it says it sent you a confirmation. The email probably just went to your spam folder — you might want to check that. But a Frontier representative also noted that you had online access to your itinerary, so you could have retrieved the reservation through Frontier.com.
That may be the biggest takeaway from your case. If you’re booking online, always whitelist the domain of your airline or online travel agency so that the important confirmation emails don’t end up in your spam folder. (However, once you’re done with the trip and the company continues spamming you with offers, you have my approval to mark all of their emails as “spam” and never see them again, hopefully.)
You had quite an adventure trying to get the confirmation for your flight. And in the end, you bought a second ticket to get to your destination. None of that should have been necessary. Frontier is one of only a few airlines that offers no phone support. It’s much easier to ignore a customer when they’re just sending emails or chat messages. I doubt this would have happened with a full-service airline, even if your confirmation had gone to your spam folder.
By the way, good job on spotting that scam. Many people have fallen for the airline call center scam, particularly Frontier customers who want to talk to someone. Never give your credit card number to a third party like that.
How to get your refund from Frontier
You might have tried appealing this to a manager. I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of the Frontier executives on this site. In the end, this case was a little confusing to my advocacy organization and required a team effort to get resolved. We reached out to Frontier on your behalf, and it came back with some good news for you.
“They should have been provided with the original confirmation number when they requested it via our online chat function,” a representative for Frontier told me. “We sincerely apologize for the difficulty they experienced trying to retrieve the original confirmation number and in attempting to resolve this matter.”
Frontier agreed to refund your airfare.
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