It would have made a difference if we had been told in advance, instead of being told ‘You can cancel your tickets up to 24 hours beforehand, and receive a refund minus administration fee’. That just doesn’t sound like ‘It doesn’t matter when you cancel your tickets, you’ll lose 30% of the ticket price and you won’t even see that for three months’.
Craig, the quotes below are what I was responding to. 24-hour (from time of purchase) cancellation policies sound like a good idea to me, and if it’s standard practice, then all the better.
Edit: I just realized there is some ambiguity in the phrase “I canceled within 24 hours”. I guess I was reading that the wrong way.
To be fair to the TA it’s probably the airline that’s withholding money. It’s long been standard (but rather poor) practice for airlines to refund tickets after a 3-4 month wait.
If you are booking a regional ticket within Asia I would always look at business class pricing because there are often seats available for a similar price to economy tickets. Most people don’t even bother looking at anything but economy fares because they assume business is too expensive. That means cattle class is completely overbooked which drives pricing up, while business class is empty which drives pricing down. You can ask your TA for D or I class tickets which are usually the discount business fares.
IMO the greatest benefit of business class fares is that they are almost always completely refundable. If you are patient while booking you can get the benefits while paying less than most people coughed up for economy.