Deidra and I have been looking forward to a trip to Los Angeles we had planned for this week. We were to leave on Wednesday and come back the following Tuesday, and had purchased plane tickets from Jet Blue and both a hotel room and a rental car from Expedia.
Today, we found out that Deidra's Grandfather Parish just passed away and his funeral is set for Saturday - right smack-dab in the middle of our vacation. So Deidra and I sat discussing our options: a) to try cancelling our vacation, b) to attempt to reschedule all of our reservations, or c) to go on vacation and miss the funeral.
We decided that option A would be our first choice, if it were possible without getting burned to badly with cancellation fees from JetBlue and Expedia. If it cost to much to cancel, we decided we would look at option B . . . and possibly option C, if both options A and B were too costly.
I first called 1-800-Expedia to look into cancelling our hotel and rental car reservations. After a very short time of talking to the automated system (giving it our itinerary number and telling it that I wanted to "cancel itinerary"), I was immediately forwarded to a live operator, without even having to hold at all. That's right - no elevator music interspersed with that annoying recording that says: "all of our operators are currently busy - please continue to hold." Score one for Expedia! The lady I talked to was very understanding and expressed her condolences in a fairly heavy foreign accent. I was told that there is normally a $50 cancellation fee ($25 for the hotel and $25 for the car rental), but that she would gladly waive those fees because of the situation. Wait - did I just here correctly? I am being refunded the entire amount of the purchase without any cancellation fee? I would have been content to pay the $50 and get the rest of the money refunded. Score another one for Expedia! Needless to say, I was very impressed with them and will certainly use them again in the future.
Deidra next contacted JetBlue (since she had paid for the flights with her credit card and under her name). She had read in the original itinerary email that there was a $30 cancellation fee per ticket to cancel via phone and $25 per ticket to cancel via the internet. But after my success in getting fees waived, she thought she would try using the phone to explain the situation and hopefully get those fees waived as well. No such luck. After waiting on hold for a few minutes, she ended up cancelling our flights with a $60 penalty ($30 per ticket) - and the rest of the money we paid for the tickets is being refunded as "JetBlue Dollars" that can only be redeemed through JetBlue. We were content with that, but definitely not as impressed with their services as we were with Expedia's.
But, all-in-all, we are glad that we were able to get everything cancelled and make it home for the funeral. Deidra was not particularly close to her Grandfather Parish (and I had only met him a couple of times), but we wanted to be there particularly to support Deidra's dad. Family is one of the greatest blessings that we have in this life. Both Deidra's parents and my parents have been there innumerable times throughout our lives (both before and after our marriage) and we are grateful that we are able to support them and show a small token of our appreciation for them through these kinds of situations.
1 comment:
Dang, you guys. That takes serious character to make the decision you did. I'm completely moved by both of your blogs on the topic.
By the way, when you DO make it out to SoCal, let me know. I have some recommendations for you! (Wait... unless you've lived there before or something, then you'd already know.)
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