Complicated chargeback for an air ticket cancelled by a Russian airline

[mikka1]

Hi everyone, 

Haven't posted here for a while, but my recent post on r/personalfinance only got one reply, so in hopes of getting a little more info I decided to cross-post it here - hope it does not violate any rules!

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Posting this for a friend who is not regularly on Reddit, but is looking for advice/opinions on this - I will help her monitor this thread and help me filling in any details

Long story short, my friend bought an air ticket for a flight from Russia to the US this summer using her US-issued credit card directly from Aeroflot for ~$950. This was shortly before February 2022 events that ultimately led to all Aeroflot flights cancelled with no immediate expectations that they resume anytime soon.

She reached out to Aeroflot and they claimed they could not issue a refund to a US-issued card because Visa had stopped operations in Russia and they simply had no way of transferring money back to the card in the US. They strongly suggested she initiates a chargeback on her credit card and sent her a letter stating that the flight had been cancelled and could not be rescheduled.

Following this advice, she then initiated a chargeback with Capital One and they initially credited her account with the full amount and then went silent. She assumed that was it, but 2 months later she noticed a reversal of her initial chargeback credit. She reached out to Cap1 again, and then things get a little murky.

Phone rep she spoke to apparently told her they don't see a particular reason for the reversal, but they see in the system that the chargeback had been denied, but they don't see why and cannot provide any more details. They did however told her that she had another 10 days to dispute this reversal/denial.

She claims she has not received a single email/letter/call from Cap1 over those 2 months (e.g. requesting additional info) and is now collecting all the materials/emails/letters she got from Aeroflot, but she seems to be very confused. Some people she spoke to claim that it is a very widespread issue right now in a Russian-speaking community in the US when Russian companies cannot fulfil their obligations to their US-based clients due to sanctions, cannot issue refunds themselves because Visa/MC does not work with Russia anymore, yet their US-based clients get many of their chargebacks denied. Same allegedly goes the other way - Russians who bought tickets from e.g. Expedia using Russian-issued cards before Feb 2022 now have exactly the same issues, just the other way round.

Any thoughts/suggestions? I remember when several European air carriers suddenly collapsed without warning a few years ago, credit card companies were generally helpful with chargebacks, however I don't think anyone has much experience handling situations like this.

She has CapitalOne Venture card if that matter

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Thanks a lot!