Oct 09, 2012 02:56 AM
21776 Views
On September 13, 2012 I booked a flight via Gulf Air for my in-laws to travel from Boston, MA to Abu Dhabi, UAE leaving October 9th to see their daughter (my sister-in-law) who had had severe pregnancy complications resulting in the emergency c-section (8 weeks early) to deliver the baby and my sister-in-law ended up with a brain hemmorhage. The tickets were purchased to give my in-laws time to get everything at home taken care of and get there to be with her. Well, my sister-in-law passed away on September 19th and her body was brought back to the US to be laid to rest. Obviously my in-laws have no need to to take the trip anymore and, with their jobs and everything else that has gone on, have no need to do so in the 6 month time that Gulf Air gave them to use the tickets.
On September 24th, an email was sent to Ravin, the General Manager of Gulf Air here in the United States, per my phone conversation with him, requesting a courtesy from the airline since travel vouchers would be of no use to them and $2300 is a lot of money to just take as a loss. Ravin said he would do what he could and be back to me in a few days. A week later I called him to make sure he had received the email as I had not even gotten a confirmation from him that he had received it and he said yes, that he would be back to me in a few days. By October 4th, I hadn't heard anything and my in-laws were supposed to leave on the 9th so I was getting nervous about the time frame and he said he was waiting to hear back from his office in Bahrain and, after a very rude conversation with him, he told me he would get back to me that afternoon. Once again, I did not hear from him.
Finally, last night, October 7th, I received an email saying this tickets were strictly non-refundable and there was nothing they could do. So now, we are just out that money and are devastated with the loss of our dear family member at not even 30 years old. I can not believe that in a situation like this, there was absolutely nothing they could do for us. Other than to be rude and then say we had to pay a $190 booking fee per ticket to change the tickets that we can not even use. Because, by the way, we can't change the name on them either. We are all extremely frustrated at the horrible customer service we received! I cannot give a review based on a flight we've taken because we didn't get too but if given the chance I would use any other airline but this one.
