7 months since I filed a claim, it is not yet resolved. I have been contacting Air France for the past 4 months now to get the transaction reference number of a reimbursement they supposedly already sent to me months ago but I never received it. Without that, my bank cannot further investigate. But Air France doesn't seem to be willing to provide such information. Has anyone experienced a similar or related issue with Air France or another airline before? What do you suggest I should do or who to contact to get Air France to give me this transaction's reference number?
On Aug 2022, I had delayed baggage for a flight from Paris to Boston and spent 3 days without my belongings. I filed a claim for compensation and didn't hear back from them only until a month-long waiting, on Sep 2022, they asked for banking details to receive the compensation.
C-XXXXXX
Dear Sir/Madam,
Please note that this is an automated message.
In order to speed up the processing of your request, please send us a scan of the following documents by simply replying to this email:
Complete bank account details, including the name and address of the account holder, IBAN, SWIFT and the name and city of the bank The reference number that you received when you reported the delay of your baggage at the airport or on our website Receipts of first necessity expenses If you do not have receipts, provide a list of items you bought and their values If you have already provided all the documents above, please disregard this message.
Yours sincerely, Air France and KLM Customer Care Assistant
Then after that, another long month of silence again. It's been now 2 months since I file the claim when they finally replied with:
C-XXXXXXX
Dear XXXX,
Thank you for your message.
I am really sorry about your baggage delay.
I understand this must have been a great inconvenience and I would like to offer our sincere apologies for this incident.
I am pleased to inform that we will give you a forfait of USD 199 (EUR 200) for baggage delay as per current legislation.
This amount will be transferred on your account within the next 28 working days.
Once again, please accept my apology for the inconvenience you experienced.
We look forward to serving your travel needs again in the near future and to welcoming you aboard another of our flights.
Best regards, Daniel Behari Air France KLM Customer Care Assistant
In favor of XXX XXX: Bank transfer remitted to: Beneficiary: XXX XXXX Amount: 199 USD Account number: XXXXX XX95
However, I didn't see the amount in my bank account. So I waited another 28 days but still got nothing. I contacted my bank and the bank could not find any transactions to my account within that date range so they told me to ask Air France for the transaction details, aka the reference number and the bank name where the reimbursement originated from. Otherwise, they cannot investigate further.
Between the 4th to 6th months, since I filed my claim, I kept emailing back Air France and made sure to clearly mention that I already contacted the bank and I need a transaction reference number. But after the usual long wait, they always reply with the same generic email:
Dear XXX,
Thank you for your message.
As per our record,your reimbursment is already processed from our side.
In case you have not recieved the amount as mentioned on the previous email,I kindly suggest you to contact you bank directly
We look forward to serving your travel needs again in the near future and to welcoming you aboard another of our flights.
Best regards, Daniel Behari Air France KLM Customer Care Assistant
I started to be frustrated at this point because they never seem to bother reading my email whatsoever and asked me to contact my bank, which is the first thing a normal person with common sense would do so how could they assume I didn't do that yet after 6 months and several emails explicitly mentioning that.
I also contacted them on their social media customer service in which they always asked me to email them back on the same email thread. I also called customer service who always deny responsibility at their level and ask me to email my request on the same email thread again.
During the past 3 months, I emailed them again and again and I received the same generic reply at least 5 times now. It's March 2023 as of writing this, 7 months after my claim and I am out of clues.
Has anyone experienced a similar or related issue with Air France or another airline before? What do you suggest I should do or who to contact to get Air France to give me this transaction's reference number?
