I never received a flight confirmation from Frontier. Can I get a refund?

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.

Q: I recently booked a roundtrip flight from Dallas to Denver on Frontier Airlines. On the same day, Frontier charged my wife's credit card $583.

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. The next day, I received a message from a reservations specialist 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 I thought was for Frontier, but they put me on hold for 15 minutes when I called it.

A person returned to 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 to 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 my wife's credit card charges. But her bank sided with Frontier.

I want to be refunded $583. I never received a confirmation email for the flight and could not take it. Can you help? -- Marcus Mann, Sugar Land, Texas

A: After charging your wife's credit card, frontier should have sent you a flight confirmation. 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.

But it didn't make sense in the upside-down world of the airline industry.

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. However, 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 hopefully never see them again.)

You had quite an adventure trying to get the confirmation for your flight. And ultimately, 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. Ignoring customers when they're just sending emails or chat messages is much easier. 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.

You might have tried appealing this to a manager. I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of the Frontier executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. 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.

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at [email protected] or get help by contacting him on his site.

© 2024 Christopher Elliott