It’s taken a while, but we finally received a refund of the airfares we paid for the trip to the US we planned to take last year. This was the biggest single cost that we’d incurred, and we had been informed when we paid that it was “non-refundable” (although it could be amended).
So we’re very glad to see the money, and grateful to the travel agent for persisting. What’s more, we got back every dollar that we’d paid. However, with some of the other refunds, our refunds were a little less than what we’d paid, and we didn’t see any details of how they’d been calculated. Perhaps in the overall scheme of things, the amounts were relatively small, and so if there were some incidental charges by the providers or the travel agent, we should be accepting of these.
At least, that’s the attitude we’re taking. But deep down I think it would be better to have a more transparent process. Of course, the problem for providers with this is that if people have more information, they’ll be more likely to query it. Didn’t someone once say, “when ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise”?
We’ve all seen the reports in the media about Australians “stranded” overseas, unable to get a flight back to Australia. And yes, some of these people are in countries from which it is indeed difficult to take flights. However, in other cases, the problem seems self-inflicted: they left Australian supposedly knowing that there might be issues, but “hoping for the best”.
In relation to the USA, at least flights are available. As I’ve mentioned, C returned from the USA early in December. In hindsight, good fortune was with her: she was watching the availability of flights for the time she wished to travel, and noticed that the prices were rapidly increasing. This prompted her to book her flight, paying a fare that in “normal” times would be regarded as high, but which in hindsight was far less than what it could have been. And she was able to travel within a day or so of her desired date – a few days after her semester finished.
I’ve now revisited the availability of fights from the US to Australia, spending a few minutes on the internet seeing what might be available. The situation is now much worse than when C booked. There is the occasional fare available on odd days a couple of months ahead, but generally speaking, unless you’re prepared to pay the fully flexible business class fare (which is mega-bucks but is quite readily available!), there’s hardly anything else around, even on “indirect” routes.
I also had a quick look at flights from Britain, which is nearly as bad, although on just a few dates it seemed that “discount” business class fares were still available – not cheap, but not quite in the eye-watering category.
Of course, it’s not the fault of the airlines. The demand for flights far exceeds the number of quarantine spaces that are available.
FOOTNOTE – I did a little more trawling on the internet after preparing this post, and found that sometimes there’s availability on flights at quite short notice, at more “reasonable” fares. So a person overseas having trouble returning to Australia should be keeping a watchful eye on the airlines’ websites
Well, it looks as though the outcome of the US election could be “messy”. We had a “zoom” call with C, who is in North Carolina. She said that, yes, there had been some local protests (but she was unsure who they were supporting!), and indeed some of the storefronts in the urban area had been boarded up. But she had been shopping in a suburban area, and had laid in adequate stocks of wine and chocolate, so she was confident that she would be OK!
On a slightly different note, the polls seem yet again to have had a problem (look at this pre-election report– no inkling of a cliff-hanger!). C’s take on this? Driving around her local area, it was obvious from the signage that Trump had a lot of grass roots support. Sure, a small sample, but who are the pollsters actually listening to?
So, the Trump administration is, as a result of pressure, changing the rule that would have terminated student visas in the United States unless the student attended “face-to-face” classes.
Since March, international students had been permitted to attend their classes virtually if necessary and remain legally in the country on student visas, but this was changed on 6 July.
Family member C would have been affected by this, as she is on a student visa in the US while doing her post-grad course. Although the university she is attending stated that it would endeavour to provide courses that satisfied the new rules, she thought that, nevertheless, there was a risk that her studies could be determined not to comply. In this case, the concern was she would have had to leave the US within a few days, which would at best have been disruptive and, at worst, impossible. The change back to the previous policy has enabled her to settle down for the next semester, and she will review the situation again at the end of the year.
I’ve been going through the process of trying to recover as much as I can of the payments we made for our proposed trip, which of course had to be cancelled. On the positive side, we got an email from the provider of our pre-paid accommodation, saying they had cancelled the booking and were going to refund the amount we’d paid. I had written off the rather substantial amount that we had paid for this, so this has certainly been a bonus.
On “hold” ….. until when?
In fact, the refund came through even before our scheduled stay. Well done Marriott. What’s more, because the cost was calculated in US$, the refund was likewise in US$. In the meantime, the Australian dollar had dropped in value, so the end result was that I received back more than I’d originally paid. My conscience bothered me for a nano-second, but I got over it.
We had also booked a couple of domestic North American flights. The US Department of Transportation has rules that over-ride the airlines’ conditions, and require that where a flight is cancelled, the fare must be refunded. In one case, the flight was indeed cancelled and no alternative was offered, so I had no hesitation submitting a refund request.
Our other flight was cancelled, but the alternative offered was over 5 hours earlier and routed through a “hub”. The DoT rules also provide for a refund if the airline makes a “significant schedule change” which the passenger declines to accept. The DoT doesn’t offer guidance as to what might be “significant”, but there are some suggestions on the internet such as here. In our case, although the alternative offered wasn’t more than 6 hours (seems to be the magic number) different, it was routed via a hub city. So our case may be “borderline” but I’ve put a refund application in and we’ll see what happens. If a refund doesn’t eventuate, then presumably we’ll get a credit but who knows whether we’ll ever be able to use this.
Perhaps not unsurprisingly, it’s not easy to find the refund application forms on the airlines’ web-sites. Yes, there are statements about “flexibility” in these strange times, with offers to change flights or to take a credit – but a refund? You have to dig down into the sites to find the form! That said, when it is submitted, you get an automatic response and a case number, so that’s slightly reassuring. But no money has yet arrived.
Our long distance flights were booked through a travel agent, who assured us that we would receive a credit for these. The agent seems to have gone to ground, although I admit that I haven’t actively followed up. I know that these are tough times for travel agents, and I’m apprehensive that we’ll have to utilise her services to get the benefit of the credit. Right now, I don’t have access to it on the airline’s website. Maybe when the time comes I’ll ask that I be given direct access to the credit. We’ll see.
Well, it seems that our forthcoming trip to North America can’t occur. As I blogged previously, I would have travelled had it been possible to do so, but things have changed so much. Overseas travel suddenly became more complex and difficult, with the flights we were scheduled to take being cancelled and the proposed cruise to Quebec being unable to operate in Canada. Then there was the likelihood of self-isolation periods and the possibility that we wouldn’t have been been able to do the things we wanted to with museums and restaurants being closed. The final straw, of course, was the “no travel” advice.
With the decision having been made for us, what next? So far I haven’t heard from our travel agent, who no doubt is swamped with calls and emails. But since I expect that there won’t be any issues cancelling the international flights and the cruise (these being the sections she booked), presumably there’s no urgency. However, travel insurance doesn’t cover cancellation costs if there’s a pandemic, and I don’t know what the chances are of getting a refund on these. I guess that’s an issue for “down the track”.
I had booked the accommodation myself. I hadn’t booked it all, but of those that I had booked, a couple were “fully flexible” . With one of these, it only took a few keystrokes to cancel. The other’s website wouldn’t recognise me. I’ve yet to ascertain whether this is a website issue or something more sinister! Another booking was pre-paid, and it looks as though I’m going to have trouble recovering that. At least in this case, daughter C may be able to use it (depending on the state of things in the US at the time).
But there’s something on the “bright” side! I see that the Australian dollar has had a massive fall (against the US dollar), so we’re saved from paying more than I was planning for while away. And the small holding of US$ cash I’ve got has increased in value!
Naturally in the process of deciding on accommodation for our trip, I’ve been looking at the TripAdvisor reviews (mostly). I find that many reviews by Americans emphasise the name of the staff members who provide them with “good” service (look at some of the reviews here, for example). Some reviews strain credibility by mentioning a string of names, and I wonder how the reviewers manage to remember them all. My sceptical mind is left with the impression that such reviews are solicited in one way or another. In any event, I am far more influenced by what reviews say about the property’s facilities and shortcomings, and its location, than about the performance of individual staff members.
In fact, I don’t seek “perfection”. I prefer to see reviews that take issue with a property’s features, because then I can decide whether or not I’d be troubled by that issue. Often I’m not.
But it seems some properties take reviews very seriously! Did you see the news report about the motel who “charged” a person $50 for posting only a “middling” review? One of the issues was that the booking was made through an intermediary site (Booking.com) and the situation regarding housekeeping wasn’t made clear. Just the same, to take the view that a mildly damaging review is in the same category as physical damage is taking things to extremes!
It’s also interesting that the property could identify the reviewer without having to resort to the courts. When posting reviews, I don’t deliberately disguise my identity, but I generally don’t post until a few days after leaving and usually express myself in general terms so that who I am hopefully isn’t immediately apparent.
With all the publicity about COVID-19 virus, inevitably the question of overseas travel plans arises. We were at dinner recently with friends who have totally cancelled their long-planned trip to Europe that they were scheduled to take in a couple of months time. We, too, have plans to travel then.
I think our friends’ decision was influenced by the fact that they were due to make a final payment on a component of their travel, namely an up-market cruise. We don’t have any “crunch” decisions like that; we prepaid some significant costs (because we were required to) before the virus issue arose, but other accommodation has only been reserved and in most instances can probably be cancelled up until shortly before arrival.
Hence, we’re not at the point where we need to make a “go or no go” decision. Just the same, my attitude is that I would go unless some actual restriction is placed on my ability to travel. S is less sure. How likely is it that we wouldn’t be able to travel to North America? It’s not out of the question, but it doesn’t seem a very likely scenario.
Coincidentally, after I started preparing this blog post, an email arrived from the cruise line that we’re travelling with for a short part of our trip. In brief, they’re offering an “on-board credit” if we keep our existing booking, or a “Future Cruise Credit” if we cancel.
Well, I can see that the cruise line is responding to the inevitable nervousness amongst its clientele, who are possibly quite risk-averse. However for me, the situation remains to “wait and see”. But just for the record, I haven’t even glanced at the travel insurance to see how it would apply (and here). Any decision we make will be purely based on our assessment of the situation, not on what we may or may not recover from insurance.
We’ll be off to see C in the USA later in the year. We booked our international flights a couple of months back, and I have now turned my mind to the couple of domestic flights that we’ll need.
The first thing I’ve now learnt is that you often pay an extra charge for baggage (unless you pay for premium seats or are a high ranking frequent flyer). But you don’t pay at the time of booking; in fact, on the flights I’ve looked at, you can’t do this (here’s a discussion thread on the subject). It seems that you pay when you check in. Makes sense, doesn’t it? That’s when you’ll know how many bags you’ll have! I think I prefer this concept to the Australian one, where, if baggage isn’t included in the fare (depends on the airline, of course), we have to decide in advance how much baggage we’ll have or else pay a much higher rate at the airport.
But the second thing I’ve learnt is that some North American airlines (United and Air Canada, but not Delta) insist on “dynamic currency conversion“. In short, once they identify that you’re booking from Australia, they do the currency conversion, charging you in Australian dollars – converted at a premium rate of exchange. In United’s case, this appeared to occur when they detect that you’re paying with Australian-issued credit card (even though you’re on the North American site), and there seemed no way around it. I’m not so sure about Air Canada (because I didn’t actually get to the stage of giving them the credit card details), so it may have been the IP address, and conceivably I could have avoided it by using a VPN (although even then, when the time came to pay, would they detect the Australian credit card anyway?)
The third thing I learnt wasn’t specific to North America, but probably applies the world over. If the flight you’re looking at operates as a code-share (and many do), check the fare on both carriers’ sites. I found a very significant difference in fares for a United flight that was code-shared with Air Canada; Air Canada quoted $A440 each, but we booked through United for $A289 each. It seems odd that a discrepancy such as this can exist, but no matter: the moral of the story is to check and re-check! For the record and for the information of those that put their trust in intermediary sites, the United fare didn’t show up on a couple of the third party flight search engines that I looked at.
After booking, and paying for, our airfares to the US, I got on with the task of applying for ESTAs (“Electronic System for Travel Authorization”). I know that we’re not travelling until next year, and that once granted, an ESTA is only valid for 2 years, but I thought that in the (hopefully unlikely) event of any difficulty arising, I ought to leave plenty of time.
Well, there are a few things to know about applying for an ESTA. Obviously, it has to be done on-line, but there are lots of “look-alike” sites out there that tempt you to use their “services” which add no perceptible value but charge an additional fee (the actual fee is US$14 for a successful application).
Secondly, there’s a process to get an “application number”, which is emailed to you, as well as to get a “Group ID” if you’re submitting a couple of applications at the same time and which enables payment to be processed via a single credit card transaction.
Thirdly, some of the questions to be answered seem a little strange, but I guess that, unless you’re asked, you may not disclose that fact that you’re a terrorist!
I went through the process, aware that it might take up to 72 hours to get a response. Toward the end of this time, I was getting a little apprehensive, but then it dawned on me: you only know that you’ve been approved by checking the “application status” page (using the “application number” that was emailed to you). I’d assumed that the outcome would also be emailed, but, no, you have to go and look on the ESTA website. The upshot is that our applications have in fact been approved, and are valid until the date 2 years after the day on which I submitted the applications. Hence it seems they were approved quite quickly.
At least, that’s the attitude we’re taking. But deep down I think it would be better to have a more transparent process. Of course, the problem for providers with this is that if people have more information, they’ll be more likely to query it. Didn’t someone once say, “when ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise”?
Musings and Mutterings 