Business

(NEW YORK) — A massive storm has triggered widespread flight cancellations, most notably at Southwest Airlines, which has canceled more than 15,000 flights since last week, stranding droves of customers during peak holiday travel season.

The problems continued for passengers on Thursday, when Southwest canceled about 2,300 flights or 58% of its flights scheduled for that day, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. But the company said in a statement that it plans to return to “normal operations with minimal disruptions” on Friday.

After a flight cancellation, airlines are typically willing to rebook passengers on the next available flight. Since flights are scarce and some airlines are overwhelmed, customers may prefer a refund.

Any potential refund depends on a passenger’s communication with the airline, Clint Henderson, a managing editor for news at The Points Guy, told ABC News.

“Be your own best advocate,” he said. “You really have to appeal to the airline directly – there’s no third party that takes care of it for you.”

Here’s how to get a refund if your flight has been canceled:

Seek a cash refund for the ticket

If an airline cancels a flight and a customer decides that he or she does not want to rebook an alternative one, the customer is entitled to a full refund by law, according to the Department of Transportation. That requirement applies no matter the reason for the flight cancellation, the agency said.

In such a circumstance, the customer can demand reimbursement directly from the airline, Henderson said.

“A lot of times airlines will try to give you a voucher but you’re entitled to cash back,” he said.

Pursue a refund for food, lodging and other expenses

In light of the holiday disruption that has stranded many customers, Southwest Airlines has vowed to “honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation,” the company said.

The offer to refund non-flight expenses only stands for customers who suffered a cancellation or “significant delay” between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2, Southwest Airlines said.

It remains unclear exactly what costs Southwest Airlines will cover. Before affected customers take on sizable costs, they should note that “there’s a lot of wiggle room in the word ‘reasonable,'” Henderson said.

Ultimately, Southwest Airlines will refund customers for food, travel and lodging fees, even if they exceed typical rates, Henderson predicted, since the company will want to restore its reputation and respond to criticism from elected officials.

“I do think they’ll make good even if you’re spending $1,000 on a last-minute flight or renting a car for $300 a day or airport hotel prices jumped dramatically and you spend $500 a night for a hotel,” he said.

Send receipts to the airline as soon as possible

Southwest Airlines has posted a web page where customers can submit receipts for expenses that resulted from travel disruptions over the holidays.

The company has warned, however, that reimbursements may take an extended period of time due to the severity of the current problems.

“As our focus remains on stabilizing and restarting our operation, of which we’re seeing very positive signs, our teams will then take on the task of processing the requests. It will take some time given the scale,” Southwest Airlines told ABC News.

In turn, customers can expedite the process as much as possible by submitting receipts to the company soon after the relevant purchases.

Henderson said he did not know how long reimbursements would take but said customers should not expect them anytime soon.

“Usually this kind of thing takes weeks and weeks, if not months,” he said. “I don’t think there will be a speedy timeline.”

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(NEW YORK) — Southwest Airlines said it plans to return to “normal operations with minimal disruptions” Friday, after days of chaos that saw the company cancel thousands of its flights, leaving many passengers stranded and seeking alternative transportation.

The airline said in a news release that it’s “encouraged by the progress we’ve made to realign crew, their schedules and our fleet.”

Southwest said its operating one-third of its schedule as of Thursday. According to flight tracking website FlightAware, the airline canceled more than 2,300, or 58%, of its flights on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the company canceled over 2,500 flights, which amounted to 62% of the day’s total, FlightAware said.

“We know even our deepest apologies — to our customers, to our employees, and to all affected through this disruption — only go so far,” the company said in a press release.

A huge storm that brought snow, heavy winds and below-freezing temperatures over the busy holiday travel season slowed down air travel, resulting in the cancellation and delay of tens of thousands of flights.

While the snowstorm grounded flights in and out of key airports in Southwest’s network, the historic scale of cancellations stemmed from the company’s uniquely complex flight coordination model and its outdated internal scheduling systems, according to flight experts, Southwest Airlines officials and union leaders.

The airline’s CEO, Bob Jordan, said he was “truly sorry” to customers and staff in a nearly three-minute video statement on Tuesday.

“Our network is highly complex and the operation of the airline counts on all the pieces, especially aircraft and crews remaining in motion to where they’re planned to go,” Jordan said.

He added, “after days of trying to operate as much of our full schedule across the busy holiday weekend, we reached a decision point to significantly reduce our flying to catch up.”

ABC News’ Max Zahn contributed reporting.

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(WASHINGTON) — One of the nation’s largest wholesale distributors of prescription drugs failed hundreds of thousands of times over the last decade to report suspicious orders of opioids, fueling the country’s opioids epidemic by putting profits over safety, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

AmerisourceBergen and two of its subsidiaries were sued, accused of ignoring red flags that suggested several pharmacies were diverting opioids to illicit markets. The complaint alleged AmerisourceBergen reported few suspicious orders and continued to supply the pharmacies for years.

“For years, AmerisourceBergen put its profits from opioid sales over the safety of Americans,” said Philip Sellinger, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. “According to the complaint, this was part of a brazen, blatant, and systemic failure by one of the largest companies in America to comply with its obligations to report suspicious opioid orders, contributing to the epidemic of opioid abuse throughout this country.”

The complaint included several examples of the alleged illegal distribution, including at two pharmacies, one in Florida and one in West Virginia. AmerisourceBergen allegedly continued to do business with the West Virginia pharmacy despite learning the drugs it distributed were likely being sold in parking lots for cash after it was reported by the company’s Corporate Security and Regulatory Affairs Department (CSRA).

A New Jersey pharmacy has pleaded guilty to unlawfully selling controlled substances, the complaint says. At another New Jersey pharmacy, the pharmacist-in-charge has been indicted for drug diversion.

Prosecutors also pointed to a pharmacy that AmerisourceBergen allegedly knew was its largest purchaser of oxycodone 30mg tablets in all of Colorado. A CSRA employee looking into the pharmacy specifically identified eleven patients at this pharmacy as potential “drug addicts” whose prescriptions likely were illegitimate, the complaint alleges. Two of those patients subsequently died of overdoses, according to the complaint. CSRA never stopped sales to or took action against the pharmacy, the complaint says.

“When drug distributors like AmerisourceBergen fail to alert the DEA of suspicious orders of prescription drugs by pharmacies, they shirk a key obligation in dealing with addictive drugs that can end lives,” said U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan for the District of Colorado.

The complaint alleges that AmerisourceBergen not only ignored red flags of diversion, it also relied on internal systems to monitor and identify suspicious orders that were deeply inadequate, both in design and implementation. These systems allegedly flagged only a tiny fraction of suspicious orders, thereby enabling diversion and AmerisourceBergen’s failure to report orders it was legally obligated to identify to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, according to prosecutors.

“AmerisourceBergen, one of the largest wholesale distributors of opioids in the world, had a legal obligation to report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration and our complaint alleges that the company’s repeated and systemic failure to fulfill this simple obligation helped ignite an opioid epidemic that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past decade,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.

AmerisourceBergen said in a statement Thursday that the federal complaint “cherry picked” five pharmacies out of the tens of thousands that use the company as a wholesale distributor, while “ignoring the absence of action” from former administrators at the DEA.

The statement added, “Even in these five hand selected examples presented by the DOJ, AmerisourceBergen verified DEA registration and State Board of Pharmacy licenses before filling any orders, conducted extensive due diligence into these customers, reported every sale of every controlled substances to the DEA, and reported suspicious orders of controlled substances to the DEA for every one of these pharmacies – hundreds of suspicious orders in total.”

The company said it terminated its relationship with four of the five pharmacies mentioned in the complaint before the DEA took any enforcement action against them, and two of the five pharmacies currently maintain their DEA-controlled substance registration.

If AmerisourceBergen is found liable, it could potentially be required to pay billions of dollars in penalties, the Justice Department said.

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(NEW YORK) — ‘Tis the season for returning unwanted Christmas presents, and smart shopping expert Trae Bodge of TrueTrae.com is sharing some helpful tips to help make the process a little bit easier.

When it comes to returning gifts in the store, be prepared for crowds this week, Bodge told ABC News Live. It’s also ideal to bring in a gift receipt with the item and ensure that items are in as sellable condition as possible.

“Tags with the item in the box it came in, if it all possible,” Bodge said.

A big advantage of returning items this week is that a lot of stores are having massive post-Holiday deals, including Target.

It’s not the end of the world if you don’t have a receipt, but having it helps you get the full value of the item back. Without one, if the item is now on clearance, you might get a reduced value when you return it.

Many stores are having a hard time managing the expense of returning items that customers bought online, Bodge said.

“You might try to return something in the store and [they] might say, ‘Just keep it. I’m going to give you the credit, because it costs too much to send it back.’ Or you might be charged shipping for returning that item,” Bodge said.

Some stores may even charge a restocking fee for such items.

And if you miss the return window, there are options available to resell it online. For example, the platform MPB.com specializes in re-selling videography and photography equipment.

“Say if you got a beautiful camera but you don’t need it, you can sell it to them and they’ll set, they’ll give you cash and they pay it out very quickly,” Bodge said.

Another option is saving the item for regifting or giving it to charity.

“Something that you don’t love, someone else may love,” Bodge said.

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(NEW YORK) — Southwest customers across the country were left stranded this week, when a growing list of flight cancellations left many desperately seeking alternative travel options in hopes of getting home in time for celebrations, work, their health and more.

A long ride home

Dianne Martinez, 56, is currently driving from Charleston, South Carolina, to Nashville, Tennessee. She’s epileptic, and “only had so many days in medicine” from her stay in Charleston.

She drove Tuesday for roughly 10 hours after a three-hour wait to get a rental car because there were no available Southwest flights to Nashville for days, she said, and prices had skyrocketed on flights on alternative airlines.

“We were looking at the other airlines and it was like $2,000, $3,000 for a flight,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

She stayed in a hotel halfway through the traffic-filled drive home Tuesday night, because “the $600 I am spending is cheaper than any other airline was offering and I need to get home.”

Martinez is a small business owner, and has been able to have her work covered by her staff – however, she said she’s one of the lucky ones: “I know a lot of people have jobs that they have to go back to … It just sucks because it’s [Southwest’s] poor planning.”

“They need to get their act together because like, we all planned around this,” Martinez said. “[Southwest] can’t blame it on anything but [themselves] at this point.”

Missed work and lost money

Derek Wood, 51, from Los Angeles, California was flying back from his brother’s house in San Francisco.

What should have been less than a two-hour flight turned into an hourslong ordeal.

“The flight time was delayed and delayed and delayed and then I think a little bit after noon, they finally told us it was canceled even though they said that the plane was just coming back and forth between LA and San Francisco, both places which are unaffected by weather,” Wood said.

He said he was shuffled between long lines as he and others waited to rebook their tickets, and seemingly “overworked employees” traded off responsibilities.

He managed to rebook through the airline’s app and trekked back to his brother’s house to wait.

Just a few hours later, “the flight today that I rebooked myself on was also canceled.” He finally booked himself a roughly nine-hour train and bus ride back home to get home several days later than expected.

He works from home, but as a genealogist, he can’t do much of his work without the resources he needs back at his house.

“Those are days of work that I was hoping to perform and bill for the end of the month, which – that money is gone and additional money that I have to spend because it’s two, three additional nights [of paying for daycare for] my dog, which adds up,” Wood said.

He continued, “I’m sure that there are many people who are in a way worse situation than I am.”

Close calls

Andy Lalwani, 27, was trying to get from Washington, D.C. to Chicago, Illinois to see his boyfriend’s family for the New Year.

However, his Thursday flight was canceled two days in advance.

He had to buy a ticket from another airline that cost more than double the price of his Southwest ticket to confirm that he’ll be able to make it to the celebration on time.

“This outdated tech and outdated operations they’ve been using has just been like funneling and trickling down to like this moment,” Lalwani said. “It makes you have a distrust in the future to ever fly with Southwest. Like how is anyone supposed to feel comfortable if something happens in the future similar to this, that their flight is going to be safe and secure?”

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said in a video statement Tuesday that he is “truly sorry” for the airline’s failures over the holiday weekend, praising the airline’s employees, who he said “are showing up in every way,” as the airline grapples to catch up after canceling thousands of flights.

“We’re focused on safely getting all of the pieces back into position to end this rolling struggle,” he said.

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(NEW YORK) — Emoji, the silly little pictorials that fill digital communication, are a fun way to deliver a message for many people. But for those who want to be enshrined in the cultural annals of face-palm, red heart and tears of joy by creating the next iconic emoji, this is serious business.

Those digital pictograms must get approval from a group known as Unicode, which standardizes written communication on the internet by maintaining a universal character set. There are limited spots available for new emoji, and each year, scores of emoji-lovers submit proposals to the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee for review.

For one emoji creator-hopeful, this process has been filled with sad-face and eye roll. Caroline Morganti is a 28-year-old software engineer living in New York City and submitted her first emoji proposal to the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee in April.

“I feel like there aren’t very many opportunities to make a defined cultural contribution in a way that has a very defined process,” Morganti told ABC News’ “Start Here” podcast. “Especially something that’s so widely used.”

Morganti’s proposed emoji was a smiley face representing nostalgia or imagination. She came up with the idea when she was scrolling through social media and realized she could not find an emoji to match her feelings.

“Nostalgia is such a big part of internet culture. Why isn’t there an emoji for that?” Morganti said.

Morganti spent over 30 hours writing an 18-page appeal to the Emoji Subcommittee. Unicode requires that submitters address a series of detailed criteria in their proposals, including the relevancy and uniqueness of their idea.

Emoji weren’t always decided this way. Many cellphone companies used to have their own unique, often arbitrary sets of emoji. In 2010, emoji were included in Unicode so that they could be universalized. But this setup has put Unicode in the often strange position of being the world’s emoji gatekeepers.

Recently, Unicode has been keeping that gate shut. The Emoji Subcommittee reviewed Morganti’s proposal through the fall and in early November, they notified her that it was rejected.

“Obviously, I’m disappointed. I thought my emoji had a lot of different uses and I thought the proposal was pretty thorough,” Morganti said.

Morganti isn’t alone. Out of the roughly 400 emoji proposals submitted during this cycle, only 10 were accepted, according to the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee. This is significantly less than the hundreds of proposals accepted annually for the past few years. What was once a deluge of new emoji is now a slow trickle.

Jennifer Daniel, the chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, attributes this decrease to the strict criteria required to maintain Unicode’s character set, and the internet’s rapidly changing landscape.

“The internet of today is very different from the internet of 30 years ago. We may have been SMS text messaging then, but today we have rich media, we have short form video, we have memes,” Daniel said to “Start Here.” “Emoji is just one of many, but emoji is the only one that’s intended to stay still.”

Daniel, and her colleagues on the Emoji Subcommittee, have the challenging task of regulating the endless expressiveness of the internet.

With thousands of already-existing emoji and limited spots available, the group must be very choosy with its new additions, Daniel said. This all points to the difficult job Unicode has: balancing traditional communication with the ever-changing norms of the internet today.

“Language is just as artistic as music, but music is comprised of music notes. And those musical notes need to be standardized if they’re going to be digitized in some way,” Daniel said. “The beauty of emoji is that it doesn’t require editing software… but there’s so many things that people can do on top of Unicode that enable digital expression.”

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(NEW YORK) — Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. issued a voluntary recall on its products containing micro greens, sweet pea leaves and cat grass over potential salmonella contamination.

The retailer announced the recall with the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, to alert consumers of the affected products sold at various Wegmans stores in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusettes, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.

Click here for a full list of potentially affected items on the Wegmans recall page.

“We are voluntarily recalling these products because some of the soil they were grown in, supplied to Wegmans Organic Farm by bio365 of Ithaca, New York, tested positive for Salmonella by the supplier,” the regional supermarket chain stated along with the FDA. “This is out of an abundance of caution. No illnesses have been associated with this recall.”

Wegmans customers are encouraged to return the affected products to the service desk for a full refund.

Salmonella is a bacteria that can make people sick, and most types cause an illness called salmonellosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most people with salmonellosis experience symptoms such as diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps, which may occur hours to days after infection, the CDC states, though some do not develop symptoms for several weeks.

Infections are diagnosed through lab testing. Most people recover within four to seven days without antibiotics, according to the CDC. Antibiotic treatment is recommended for people with severe illness, those with weakened immune systems, adults 50 and older with medical issues like heart disease, as well as infants, and adults older than 65, the agency states.

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(NEW YORK) — Christmas has come and gone, and now you may be left with a gift or two that you don’t really want.

But depending on how you return your gift, it may cost you. And if you wait too long to take action, you may be stuck with it.

So how can you best navigate retailers’ return policies?

ABC News’ Becky Worley appeared on Good Morning America Monday, sharing everything you need to know about returns and exchanges after the holiday season:

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(NEW YORK) — With the holiday rush behind you, it’s time to shop for y-o-u. The 2022 after-Christmas sales are in full swing and better than ever.

Among other retailers, Amazon’s end-of-year sale runs through Dec. 31 with discounts on favorites like the RENPHO massage gun, JBL headphones and more.

Nordstrom’s half-yearly sale also kicks off Dec. 26 and runs through Dec. 29. Lululemon’s Boxing Day specials are running through Dec. 28 and will have you jumping for joy.

Whether you are checking in on the return policy of a holiday gift you know you won’t keep or have been eyeing a new pair of boots all season, scroll below for some ‘can’t miss’ Boxing Day deals:

Amazon

Amazon is offering its best deals on tech and home essentials during its end-of-year sale.

Everlane

Everlane is having an end-of-year clearance event offering up to 60% off markdowns.

lululemon

Lululemon is offering Boxing Day specials through Dec. 28.

Nordstrom

Nordstrom’s half-yearly sale kicks off with an EXTRA 25% off clearance items from Dec. 26 through Dec. 29 at 11:59 PT.

Ruggable

End of Year Ruggable sale will be kicking off Dec. 26. The promotion will include up to 20% off sitewide, with shoppers receiving 15% off the purchase of one rug and 20% off the purchase of two.

Vince Camuto

Vince Camuto is running its end-of-year sale event offering up to 60% off select styles through Jan. 2.

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(NEW YORK) — Tesla stock has plummeted since CEO Elon Musk took over Twitter, falling more than 45% in about over two months.

In all, the company’s stock has dropped more than 65% since January, when Musk began investing in Twitter. By comparison, the tech-heavy Nasdaq has fallen about half as far over that period.

Musk said on Tuesday that he will resign as head of Twitter when the company identifies a successor. The news temporarily buoyed Tesla stock before it again turned downward.

The electric vehicle company faces falling demand amid recession fears, heightened competition and pandemic-induced production challenges.

Moreover, some analysts and major investors have sharply criticized Musk over a perceived lack of focus on Tesla, saying the company needs leadership as it contends with an adverse business environment.

“Musk is viewed as ‘asleep at the wheel’ from a leadership perspective for Tesla at the time investors need a CEO to navigate this Category 5 storm,” Dan Ives, a longtime Tesla bull and managing director of equity research at Wedbush, said in a research note on Thursday.

“Instead Musk is laser focused on Twitter which has been an ongoing nightmare that never ends for investors, with hopes a new CEO is picked in the coming weeks as a first step forward,” Ives added.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Aside from investor concerns over Musk, the company’s stock losses owe in part to insurgent rivals and diminished demand.

Tesla remains the top-selling electric vehicle company in the U.S., but its lead has slipped in recent months as competitors offer a host of affordable alternatives, a S&P Global Mobility report showed last month.

The company held 65% market share of new registered vehicles in the U.S. through the third quarter of this year, a drop from 71% last year and 79% in 2020, the report found.

Responding to weakened demand, Tesla announced on Wednesday that it would offer $7,500 discounts on Model 3 and Model Y vehicles delivered in the U.S. this month. Shares in Tesla fell by nearly 9% the following day.

Still, significant investor attention has focused on Musk and his apparent focus on Twitter.

The world’s richest person has sold nearly $40 billion worth of Tesla stock since late last year, including a $3.6 billion sale as recently as last week, as he has financed the acquisition of Twitter.

The sales have reduced the stake Musk holds in Tesla, raising questions about his continued level of involvement with the company.

Some major Tesla investors have called for Musk to place his primary focus on Tesla, which boasts a market capitalization of $392 billion, far larger than the value of Twitter, for which Musk spent $44 billion.

“I think it is in the best interest for Tesla shareholders for Elon to be back at Tesla working full time,” Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, tweeted on Sunday.

For his part, Musk has defended his actions at Twitter as part of an aggressive effort to rescue the company from financial peril, which he described in a Twitter Spaces interview on Tuesday as an “emergency fire drill.”

“That’s the reason for my actions,” he added. “They may seem sometimes spurious or odd or whatever.”

In a Twitter Spaces interview on Thursday, Musk vowed to stop selling Tesla stock until at least 2024, though he has previously violated commitments to halt sales of the stock. He added, meanwhile, that he hadn’t missed “a single important Tesla meeting” since acquiring Twitter.

Musk also said on Thursday that he expects the economy to fall into a “serious recession” next year, further slashing demand for expensive items.

To be sure, this year has pummeled automakers across the sector. Shares of Ford have plummeted 45% in 2022; while General Motors has fallen 43% and Toyota has dropped 26%.

Interest rate hikes at the Federal Reserve have spiked borrowing costs, making car purchases more difficult for consumers already strained by sky-high inflation. Meanwhile, pandemic-induced production bottlenecks and chip shortages have persisted, increasing costs and causing delivery delays.

In recent months, falling consumer sentiment has placed added pressure on the industry.

Despite these headwinds, Tesla can stanch its financial bleeding and turn around its business, said Ives, of Wedbush Securities.

He attributed roughly 70% of Tesla’s stock decline in recent months to Musk’s focus on Twitter, and urged Musk to return his attention to the company and stop selling Tesla stock.

“Taking a step back, the long term Tesla transformational story remains intact,” Ives said, adding that he expects global electric vehicle demand to significantly accelerate over the coming years.

Tesla, he said, is the “clear leader poised to benefit front and center.”

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