Originally Posted by rainypolo

I need to come to the experts here, because I'm feeling pretty annoyed with apparently having gifted Alaska $2000 (sort of)

We bought tickets for April of 2020 in July of 2019.

These tickets were purchased through the AMEX travel portal using only AMEX points.

In early April of 2020, we changed our flights to November of 2020.

In September of 2020, we changed our flights to April 2021.

I have a child who absolutely cannot travel until he gets fully vaccinated, and that looks like it will happen at some point this fall.

I contacted Alaska to try and change our tickets or convert them to credit, and was told that because they are "so old," they have lost all value if we do not travel by April 22, 2021.

On the Alaska website, I went to "Change My Flight" and was given the option of switching to flights in January of 2022 for $125 per person (with, weirdly a $160 credit sent to my wallet). However, in the fine print, it said the value of the original tickets must be used by April 22, 2021.

Questions:
1) Is there a work around for just getting the value as credit? Is there a magical word I can say?
2) If I change the tickets to January 2022 for $125 per person, will I at some point have to pay them more money for the value of the original tickets? Or can I be confident we'll just have to spend an additional $500 and be done with it (which is still annoying all things considered). Are these new tickets and I may be able to change again in case health stuff precludes travel?

We have no status, a lot of earned miles, and do have two Alaska Visa cards. I will take any ideas or help!