[nheld22`]

Due to the recent hurricane Continental rerouted our outbound tickets to avoid New York for our travel to Egypt. Unfortunately during this process they accidentally cancelled our return flights. Everything looked fine online but when we arrived at the Hurghada airport, they informed us that we didn’t have tickets and there was nothing they could do. We had to purchase our own flight from Hurghada to Cairo on the next flight, which caused us to miss our next leg that went onward to New York (which we also wouldn’t have had tickets for). Once at the Cairo Airport we spoke to the EgyptAir desk because that was the airline operating our flight to New York. They told us that Continental had accidentally cancelled our tickets, but that there was nothing they could do. They sent us to a different terminal to speak to the Continental desk. When we arrived at that terminal we found out that there is no Continental desk. We had to take the bus back again to the main terminal, once there we spoke with Lufthansa because they handle all of United Airlines flights in Cairo. The Lufthansa rep repeated that Continental had messed up, but that again there was nothing she could do. She called the local Continental representative in downtown Cairo for me. The Continental representative very quickly told me that “the system is down, call back in an hour.” I called back twice and got the same response. The fourth time I jumped in and told him about our situation, and that we needed to get home. He took our information and said he would call back if he could help us. The woman at the Lufthansa desk told me that he wouldn’t call back. She said that the Continental representative is never any help and suggested we try to contact someone back home. I e-mailed my father the situation and he called the 1-800 number for Continental. They informed him that everything was fine with our flights and to talk to the United desk (which is Lufthansa). Once again I tried to work with Lufthansa but she stated that there was really nothing they could do except to book us on another flight at our expense. I tried the Cairo Continental office in Cairo one last time and was given the same story that the system was down and that there was nothing he could do. By this time it was late afternoon and our options for getting out of Cairo and heading towards home were getting slim. My father graciously bought us tickets on the last flight out of Cairo that he could get us through Continental’s website (we wanted to keep everything on the same airline). We ended up spending the night in Heathrow before finally getting home 13 hours after our original time. Over the past four weeks we have submitted refund requests and spoken to Continental’s Customer Care line and have gotten nowhere. They keep telling us that nobody knows if they are working on a refund or not, and will not give us a time-table as to when we might get a response. They have admitted that they made a mistake, but still won’t commit to giving us a refund, or even acknowledge that they are reviewing it. We are very frustrated as these last minute tickets cost us over $5500.

[jimworcs]

If ever there was a case for small claims court this is it...write a letter, recorded delivery and state that you will sue in small claims court if they do not respond within 30 days with the cost of your additional tickets. Do not accept a refund of the unused tickets, as your consequential damages ar far greater and are due to their negligence. Write down the dates, times and people you spoke to while it is fresh in your mind, showing how hard you tried to mitigate your damages and assist them to put right their error. Donot accept vouchers for future travel, they are bound up in red tape and very hard to use. Copy your letter of complaint to the DOT. Continental will have a hard topime justifying their actions. You will win. Good luck.