Originally Posted by
bob12403
So if you book your own hotel room using hotel points, how do you file a claim with insurance (or the airline itself)?
You don’t.
Originally Posted by
eng3
No you didn't, I was thinking of Kacee's message. And I don't think the intent was to give blanket advice. But it can come off that way.
Right; it’s easy for a message to lose nuance and context when it comes up in a search two years after the fact or something.
Originally Posted by
eng3
I didn't know about the two tier system. I often remember standing in line and seeing the agent going in order of the people standing in line and assigning rooms until a hotel was full and then moving to the next.
Maybe the app system does the two tier. If i recall, my parents had the option of Holiday Inn, Ramada, or Best Western. My mom is 1K, dad nothing. They were op-uped to J but ticketed in Y (reservations still showing Y). But they stood in line waiting for an agent for a long time until no agent showed up. Then had trouble using the app. So maybe the good hotels all got taken by people with working apps (or knew how to use the app). Their flight arrived at midnight so it's also possible the good hotels were all booked full by then.
I realized, after clicking on the link that Kacee provided, that AA and UA use exactly the same system, so it evidently comes from a third party. And, yes, all of the good rooms could have been booked — although I’ve actually received a voucher for a hotel with no rooms available.
The guy working at the front desk was kind enough to drive me back to IAH, and I ended up spending the night in baggage claim. (That flight canceled due to a crew timeout after midnight, after about a six-hour delay due to thunderstorms that shut down the airport — and it’s extremely difficult to book a hotel online for the previous calendar day, so the alternative was to call the hotels one by one, and the same guy who drove me back to the airport told me not to bother, as he’d already called every hotel in the area and they were all booked).