I think you just play the call to complain game there. They have to give you like for like; if you bought the flight with a voucher that expires, sure, refund it with a voucher that expires. But if you bought with cash, they should give you cash back.

In my experience (at 800k lifetime miles at this point), the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you're not happy with something, call to complain.

This. The voucher is always their first offer and they will claim it is all they can do. Keep pushing and they will refund your money in the same form of payment you used but they don't want you to know you have that right.

Yea but you have to commit to spending hours on hold with the expectation that they might not cave. I've gone back in forth with airlines before only to get nothing, it's not worth the time often. There should be some law that refunds (and many other business operations) should be automatic and can't be gatekept with several layers of phone systems, lies about only giving you a restricted voucher, and holds of more than X minutes.

I'd imagine this practice of only refunding people that spend hours and hours complaining to customer service is part of what they're getting fine for in the first place. If they're legally obligated to refund you, you shouldn't be getting the runaround like that just to get what is owed to you.

Frontier can be really cheap, I've gotten trips from New York to Miami for $39. It's just not worth 4 hours on the phone for a $39 refund.

Yep. American gave me a voucher that only I could use within 12 months.