It’s pretty evident that I am obsessed with TheFlightDeal, and I especially get excited when a deal pops up from the New York area to somewhere warm and sunny in the middle of the winter.
I am also a better spontaneous-traveler than a planner-aheader. Usually when I plan too far ahead with mistake fares and sales, it turns out to really be a mistake, and I lose out. You’d think I’d learn, but this also happened again not too long ago when I impulsively booked a mistake fare/mileage run to Iguazu Falls 6 months ahead with a routing that included 30 hours (!!) of flying each way in economy.
As a pregnant diva woman, let’s just say that I let that ticket go to waste (after much huffing and puffing over the loss, of course). But still, at least I vowed to never mileage-run again, and I’m sticking to it.
Back in July, a nice deal from EWR – St. Lucia popped up on American Airlines for winter 2015 travel that included a night in Miami on both the outbound and return segments. “Normal” people might have steered clear from a routing like that, but when you’re dealing with polar-vortexes in the heart of January, any excuse to spend a night in warmer weather will do. I was sold. Two tickets were booked.
As the months passed, it was time for me to look into hotel options in Saint Lucia. S*#&, it was expensive. I’m talking $600ish a night at a non-chain hotel. Sure, St. Lucia is probably beautiful, but this trip was looking less and less enticing the more I thought about it. Even with “cheap flights”, I’d be spending a fortune. I needed out.
Then comes along United and their tempting discount award destinations. I see a familiar place. A happy place – Cancun. As a United 1k (for one more month), I decided to “protect myself” and book 2-round trip awards at 28,000 miles and $69 a piece (I tried to add in the free one-way, but it repriced to the standard 35,000-mile price). If anything, I could cancel just hours before the flight for a full refund.
Now all I had to do was hope and pray that I received the magical email… and I did:
I wrote an earlier post about how schedule changes can be used to your advantage. After a 7-minute conversation with American Airlines, I was able to receive a full-refund on the flights to St. Lucia!
In all honesty, I was expecting to eat yet another loss, so this new really made my day.
Of course, the only way to celebrate was to book 4-nights at the new Hyatt Zilara Cancun (all-inclusive), which is a sweet-spot redemption in itself if you have a healthy balance of Hyatt points and/or Ultimate Rewards points.
At 25,000 points per night, you’re getting a 5-star, all-inclusive suites-only property for two adults, quite the bargain.
It’s safe to say that I consider all of these events a “win”.
Have you had a similar story? Also, have you visited the Zilara in Cancun yet? If so, would love feedback and tips!
Stay warm, everyone.
I’m actually just mulling over a trip I booked that had some flight changes as well-also with AA. The “more significant” changes are: departure time fr DUB to leave 55 minutes earlier, arrives in ORD 55 minutes earlier, leaves LAX 40 mins later, arrives SFO 47 mins later. Do I have enough leverage to cancel?? If I cant get a full refund, do you think they’ll be amenable to changing to a day or couple days later inbound to US? It’s about almost 2 hours of schedule change (1 hr earlier departure, 1 hr later arrival). Need your advice please? Any tips on how to be more persuasive? FWIW, my outbound to DUB barely changed- does it matter?
I would say you absolutely have a strong case for a refund. They don’t really have to know much about the details about your persona l plans. Just simply say “there have been several changes throughout my entire itinerary and it no longer works out for me”. If you do go into detail, you can say that you cannot make a flight 55 minutes earlier (substantial) due to transportation and/or you have other travel arrangements that will cause your connection to be missed… etc… less is more when it comes to going into detail. Most agents are willing to be flexible with refunds or at the very least, re-routing. Of course, you can always hang up and call again ;)