Renfe Refunds Almost €100m To Customers For Pandemic Tickets Cancelled

RENFE Refunds Almost €100m To Customers For Tickets Cancelled Due To The Pandemic

Spanish train operator Renfe has reportedly returned a total of €97.5m to customers who have cancelled around 2.6m tickets with the company since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, as a result of the continuing restrictions on travel during that time.

During the first lockdown, Renfe refunded a reported €38.5m, and then since last October, another €59m, as the company honoured its extraordinary pledge – right up until last Sunday 9 when the state of alarm ended – applied to all trains nationwide, whereby they promised to refund any ticket in full, or change a ticket, free of charge, to any passenger who could not fulfill their trip with them, even if they simply changed their mind about travelling.

This pledge was applied to all tickets for AVE, Larga Distancia, Avant, or Conventional Media Distancia services, and passengers were entitled to get a full refund, without any cancellation fee, or exchange their ticket for another date, again without any fee, while also automatically extending the validity and travel periods for all current ‘BonoAVE‘, ‘Bono Colaborativo’ and ‘BonoAVE Flexible’ passes.

Renfe has stressed that all the health measures being established by the government for travel in Spain, and the measures adopted by themselves, before, during, and after boarding any of their trains, are allowing rail transport “to be carried out in compliance with safety and hygiene conditions”, as reported by 20minutos.es.

On April 20, Renfe implemented their personalised ticketing system, where all passengers must enter their basic travel data at the time of booking, name, address, telephone number, email address, which is then shared with the health authorities, to help establish if any traveller might have been using the train while testing positive for coronavirus, making them easily contactable.

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