The Great Cancellation
04/14 2741 active cases in Australia, 41 new cases in last 24 hours
On March 4th I booked our wedding flights. A great time to be sinking $2300 into plane tickets no? I checked all the boxes for "travel insurance" 'and extra flexible fare, which I usually don't, but things already seemed a bit dicy. All that apparently did no good whatsoever.
The easiest to cancel was the Hilton hotel in Bogota, who actually emailed me just to confirm if we were really coming. I said no and they cancelled the reservation. Guess that's how you maintain a reputation as a good hotel chain.
Surprisingly, United Airlines also didn't give me too much trouble, though they insisted on giving m a "credit voucher" for the value of the ticket, which I'm a bit grumpy about but I realize they're having to refund possibly literal billions.
COPA, the Panamanian airline, the webpage at first was giving me error messages. I actually booked the flight through another webpage, eDestinos.com.co, I think because the COPA webpage doesn't work very well in English and is frustrating, and this seemed to give me the same or slightly better price. Most recently I have an email from eDestinos that says "Because the pandemic COVID-19, the airline has canceled the flight. For this reason, we are checking to see if you are entitled to a change of flight date or a refund on your behalf." which sounds promising at least.
The remaining set of flights are for Cristina from Caracas to Bogota and back. I booked through kiwi.com for the same reason -- the flight itself is Avoir Airlines and their website is Spanish only.
If I go in to "manage my booking no the Kiwi site:
...can't give me the credentials to cancel directly with the airline? Why not? (AND I had paid extra for the "premium" service with these assholes). Oh they offer to give me $72 dollars back on my $370 flight?
There's no way to email them but I called. Their website as well as the phone system tells you due to the high volume not to call unless your flight is less than three days away. I tried anyway but the phone tree router after I input my booking number told me to call back when it was less than three days away. Anyway so now it's three days away so I called...
I have to enter the booking code and then date of birth. And I cant get it to accept a date of birth. I tried primarily Cristina's since its her name the booking is for. I triple checked I was inputting the right birthday, and in the format they wanted, and it simply would not accept it. Tried mine and it would not accept it either. Tried looking at the booking online to see if it would tell me an erroneously entered birthday but it doesn't display one. So I seem to have absoluetly no way of contacting these people.
They do have that "as much as possible" "up to three months" refund but I'm really worried if I click that they'll say "oh as much as possible was $20! here you go!"
And it says they'll add more direct cancellation options tomorrow (the 15th) so I guess tehre's that but it's cutting it pretty fine (the flight's on the 16th!).
Anyway I'm pretty displeased with these people. I paid for premium service and there's no way to contact them at all. Is there a good place to give them a terrible review? I understand all the airlines and booking services are taking a major walloping right now but this thing is stonewalling me and presents itself as better than that so I really want to give them a piece of my mind 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
On March 4th I booked our wedding flights. A great time to be sinking $2300 into plane tickets no? I checked all the boxes for "travel insurance" 'and extra flexible fare, which I usually don't, but things already seemed a bit dicy. All that apparently did no good whatsoever.
The easiest to cancel was the Hilton hotel in Bogota, who actually emailed me just to confirm if we were really coming. I said no and they cancelled the reservation. Guess that's how you maintain a reputation as a good hotel chain.
Surprisingly, United Airlines also didn't give me too much trouble, though they insisted on giving m a "credit voucher" for the value of the ticket, which I'm a bit grumpy about but I realize they're having to refund possibly literal billions.
COPA, the Panamanian airline, the webpage at first was giving me error messages. I actually booked the flight through another webpage, eDestinos.com.co, I think because the COPA webpage doesn't work very well in English and is frustrating, and this seemed to give me the same or slightly better price. Most recently I have an email from eDestinos that says "Because the pandemic COVID-19, the airline has canceled the flight. For this reason, we are checking to see if you are entitled to a change of flight date or a refund on your behalf." which sounds promising at least.
The remaining set of flights are for Cristina from Caracas to Bogota and back. I booked through kiwi.com for the same reason -- the flight itself is Avoir Airlines and their website is Spanish only.
If I go in to "manage my booking no the Kiwi site:
...can't give me the credentials to cancel directly with the airline? Why not? (AND I had paid extra for the "premium" service with these assholes). Oh they offer to give me $72 dollars back on my $370 flight?
There's no way to email them but I called. Their website as well as the phone system tells you due to the high volume not to call unless your flight is less than three days away. I tried anyway but the phone tree router after I input my booking number told me to call back when it was less than three days away. Anyway so now it's three days away so I called...
I have to enter the booking code and then date of birth. And I cant get it to accept a date of birth. I tried primarily Cristina's since its her name the booking is for. I triple checked I was inputting the right birthday, and in the format they wanted, and it simply would not accept it. Tried mine and it would not accept it either. Tried looking at the booking online to see if it would tell me an erroneously entered birthday but it doesn't display one. So I seem to have absoluetly no way of contacting these people.
They do have that "as much as possible" "up to three months" refund but I'm really worried if I click that they'll say "oh as much as possible was $20! here you go!"
And it says they'll add more direct cancellation options tomorrow (the 15th) so I guess tehre's that but it's cutting it pretty fine (the flight's on the 16th!).
Anyway I'm pretty displeased with these people. I paid for premium service and there's no way to contact them at all. Is there a good place to give them a terrible review? I understand all the airlines and booking services are taking a major walloping right now but this thing is stonewalling me and presents itself as better than that so I really want to give them a piece of my mind 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡