Wholesale Travel Center WTC, Airfare.com Booked ticket incorrectly, will not refund full amount Bethesda, Maryland

This company advertised and sold us airplane tickets online utilizing Airtran and United. One week prior to the flight date, this firm emailed us, asking for the tickets to be returned physically for a full refund as the "ticketing agreement between the two airlines" had been rescinded. These two
airlines deny that such an agreement ever existed. We believe that this firm is lying about the reason for the ticket cancellation - we believe this was an incorrectly booked ticket with the error on their part.

Despite previously telling us that after we returned the tickets, we would receive a full refund, we were told today that they would withhold the $25 in FedEx fees and have also declined to reimburse us the cost of us returning the tickets to them ($13). If they had agreed to refund the money without requiring a physical return of the tickets, we would not have had to incur these postal charges, and as such, we believe we should be refunded this amount as well.

We believe we are entitled to these reimbursements due to the fact that this was entirely their error.

Actual email received from them is below. The way the message is worded sounds like it is an ongoing scam. Note again that the airlines deny ever having a code-share agreement.

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Dear Traveler,
This is an Urgent message regarding your booking that requires your immediate attention.
United Airlines and AirTran no longer have any ticketing agreements. As your travel agent it is our responsibility to notify you of these changes that have occurred. Your tickets were confirmed, issued, and verified before the airlines canceled their contracts. The airlines will not honor your reservation they will deny you boarding. At the times your reservation was booked the tickets were valid documents but due to the cancellation of agreements and contracts with United Airlines and AirTran Airways they are not honoring those tickets at the airport. If the tickets were not valid they would not have been issued at the time of your booking.

We encourage you send us your tickets back so we can process a full refund on your reservation so you can go online and re-book your reservation. This is a terrible situation that we are just finding out about and we want to make sure that you do not have any problems when you travel. Please send us your tickets as soon as possible so we can process your refund and you get you r money back as soon as possible. Airfare.com is here to help you, please notify us on how you want to proceed with your booking. If you have any questions or concerns in this matter please call us as soon as possible our call center is open 24 hours a day and all of our agents are here to help you.


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