If you read Planning a Trip with Points, you would know that we planned our honeymoon to Fiji using some points that we had earned.
Well… after our wedding, I got covid, and we had to cancel the entire trip!! We were devastated!! Brandon and I had been looking forward to this for so long. The real bummer was that Brandon never tested positive for covid this whole time.
Note to anyone planning a honeymoon: give yourself at least three weeks after your wedding day if you are going to a country that is more strict on covid.
At the time, Fiji was strict with its covid guidelines. You needed to take a test within 48 hours of arriving, and if you tested positive, you had to quarantine for ten days.
But we were not going to Fiji just to be stuck in our hotel room for most of the time, so we had to cancel everything.
Before I began canceling everything, we decided to postpone the Fiji trip for our one-year anniversary instead. Before you start to call companies for refunds or credits, make sure you have a game plan of what you want to do.
If you can’t postpone the trip and are looking for full credit or refund, be sure to know that immediately. If you can delay the trip, be sure you know the dates you are looking for in the future. Knowing our dates helped make everything move a little smoother.
I was most worried about the resort we booked without points because they had a strict policy about canceling and reservation changes. So I started with them first. They were the nicest people ever!! We were able to reschedule within one calendar for no charge!! So we asked for our dates in June of 2023.
With hotels in international countries, I reach out to them through email to avoid international call charges. I have no problem doing this with any international hotel I have contacted. They sometimes even have Whatsapp!
We booked the flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles and our Second Hotel stay with Chase Reward Points. These were by far the easiest to deal with. We canceled the stay and received 100% of our points back into our account. I did have to call the Chase Ultimate Rewards Customer Service, and there was a wait, but overall the service was good.
The most difficult one was our round-trip flight to Nadi. We booked through the Chase Travel portal with cash. When we had to cancel our flight, Fiji Airways was doing a book-with-confidence type deal where you could change your flight and keep the price you paid up to sometime in 2023.
I cannot find those details now as I write this, but I swear I am not making it up. So I attempted to call Fiji Airways first. Unfortunately, because we booked through Chase, they could not change our ticket; Chase had to do it on their end.
So then I called Chase. They could have been more helpful during this time. And they could only cancel the ticket and keep a credit with Fiji Airways that we would need to use through the Chase Portal by May 2023.
I am grateful that we got the credit, but the fact they could not and did not seem to try to change the ticket was frustrating, especially now because airline tickets have risen dramatically in price. The price we paid for our round-trip tickets is now the price of one round-trip ticket.
The process was pretty simple, especially when using points. Losing out on the flight deal we got was a big bummer, but at least we already have one ticket paid for, and we can look forward to our trip in June!
