Viva Macau update

We were hoping to get our refunds by now, but instead, yesterday I received this letter from the Macau Consumer Council. The important excerpts are below, with semi-snarky comments interspersed:

“Dear Sir/Madam,

The Consumer Council has received a few hundred complaints against Viva Macau Airlines for the refund of flight ticket and claims for damages as a result of various flight cancellation by Viva…(Only a few hundred, really? That wouldn’t even be one plane, and at least 20 flights were cancelled so I’m sure they have many, many more unhappy people.)

However, Viva’s announcement of its office closure and subsequent cessation of business on 7th April 2010…rendered the liaison between Viva and our office and the follow-up actions for subsequent complaints unavailable. (Uh oh…)

Meanwhile, the arrangement of the refund of flight ticket and the related follow-up actions still remain uncertain, it casts doubt as to whether Viva would honour its promise to reimburse to the complainants within 1-2 weeks after flight cancellation (which was the verbal commitment made by Viva’s staff at the time of handling complainants’ refund procedures. As Viva has made no reply to the complainants’ complaints so far and its business being ceased, most complainants suspect fraud as a result of the non-compliance of the refund pledged by Viva. (Oh drat. I should have known that special fare was too good to be true!)

In view of this, pursuant to the regime of [insert law and section yadda-yadda], our office will refer the related complaint cases to the Judiciary Institutions for investigation. Should the Public Prosecution Office regard that there is sufficient evidence amounting to prosecution against Viva, you may pursue your claims for the refund and compensation under the civil litigation procedures.” (Wtf?! I have two months left in Macau – no way they’re going to move this fast enough for me to get a refund that way.)

In other words, it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever get my money back from Viva, not to mention the related costs of cancelling the hostel reservation/overnight bus tickets. My only other option (which I am currently pursuing) is filing a claim with the trip cancellation insurance that (thankfully) came automatically with my Mastercard, but that’s also going to take a while because they have to mail a claims form to my US address and then my family will probably have to fill it out for me and mail it back. The slightly tricky issue is proving the flights were canceled because of the carrier’s “financial inviability,” aka the carrier must have gone bankrupt, but considering Viva has pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth, that should count, right?

In the meantime, I was able to see sakura semi-vicariously through the photos of my two friends in Japan: Garrett and Kunmi. *sigh* Oh well, maybe next year I'll just take a short jaunt to Washington DC instead...