A man turned to ChatGPT for help when he was denied a refund for his flight and hotel accommodations after he had to cancel his planned trip to Colombia at the last minute. Taking to Reddit, he shared his experience of seeking help from the AI chatbot and expressed his surprise at the results.
In a Reddit post, the man said that he was planning to travel to Medellín, Colombia, but due to a last-minute medical emergency, he had to cancel his journey. He was immediately hit with a ‘no’ from both the airline and the hotel.
‘The hotel had a no-cancellation policy. They absolutely said no,’ he explained. The airline's ‘response was that there was no cancellation policy.’
Faced with losing $2,500 ( ₹2 lakh), he turned to an unlikely ally: ChatGPT. ‘I asked ChatGPT to act as my lawyer and advocate for me,’ he said. He shared with the AI assistant that he had Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and had obtained a doctor’s note to prove it. Using this information, he asked ChatGPT to write a letter advocating for a refund on medical grounds.
‘ChatGPT researched Expedia policies, the hotel’s policies, and the airline policies. It then wrote a letter for me advocating,’ he said.
After some effort, he secured partial success as the hotel granted him a refund. However, the airline rejected his request and stated that ‘a refund is only possible due to death or terminal illness.’
But he refused to give up, and he fed this response back to ChatGPT, asking it to draft another letter.
The chatbot got to work and wrote a second letter, aimed at the airline’s policy language and the implications of dismissing mental health conditions. ‘It described reasons why and how my medical condition can affect the flight, and that they were being biased based on a mental illness. This thing wrote this letter to the core,’ he said.
An hour later, the airline changed its stance: ‘The airline responded that my refund will be honoured.’
‘Had I not used ChatGPT, I would have had to hire a paralegal. And that would’ve cost me more money. Don’t take no for an answer… ChatGPT-4.0 saved me from losing $2,500,’ he said.
