Hi everyone! I'm a newbie here, so please forgive me for any lacking knowledge.

Between my SO and I, we scrounged up a mixture of miles and cash to purchase basically 6 one-way, first class tickets between LAX and Asia in November 2019 for October 2020. They got canceled by Avianaca. Lifemiles DID NOT even notify us of the cancellation, they just cancelled and then I had to check my confirmation numbers on their site to see what was up with our flights, only to find that these confirmation numbers didn't exist in their system.

I chatted with someone on the Avianca side because Lifemiles said that they couldn't help me with any updates. In my chat with the support on 9/11, they said that we had until February 28th, 2021 to request to rebook our flight (had to be the same class and departure/destination airports). I asked when the deadline was to request a refund of miles, they said it was when our tickets expired. I read that as our tickets expired on February 28th, 2021 for rebooking or requesting a refund of miles, so I kept checking between September and February to see if our routes would come back online, but it hasn't been an option to even book. So finally in the last week of February (which I know was my fault for holding out/waiting so long), I reached out to LifeMiles to initiate the miles redeposit.

They said that our tickets expired in November 2020 per the 1-year expiration date, so they can't do anything about it. I'm kicking myself for misinterpreting the chat person's response and I'm frantically trying to figure out an alternative now that it's 3/1. My question - has anyone had success in getting either a refund or rebooking based on grace periods? I'm so upset with myself since we sank a good amount of miles (this took like 3 different credit card bonuses + money) into this trip. I'm on the phone waiting for Avianca customer support, but it seems like Avainca and LifeMiles operate separately. Thanks in advance for any help or advice.