perkerkeem

I booked a Marriott stay through UR but when I called the Chase Travel customer service number to get the Marriott confirmation number they said they couldn't find one. Is this something to worry about/should I try again for a new CSA? I read that they sometimes don't issue the confirmation number until last minute but I am super paranoid that I'll wait for it, something went wrong and I have to pay a last minute hotel price (I'm cursed so this is bound to happen). Also chase has my Marriott rewards number on the reservation but nothing shows up on Marriotts website. Thanks in advance

mia

Most likely the room has not yet been reserved in your name and Connexions is shopping the booking around to see which consolidator will give them (not you) the lowest price. When does the stay begin?

Happy

I would wait a couple days then call again. Definitely need to make sure the hotel sees your booking.

Came across a blog write up this weekend and some comments followed, really scare me in using UR to book hotels. I wish I could find the blog piece again but anyway that is what a reader wrote in his comment -
Basically he booked Marriott hotel in Atlanta using UR pts just like you. He arrived the hotel which did not have his reservation. Hotel was also sold out as there was a convention in town. He then spent 45 min at the hotel lobby talking to Chase (Connexion) on his phone, literally clicked the phone number on his confirmation email from UR. They finally figured out that due to the hotel was sold out, the UR booking had NEVER gone thru to the hotel!!! Of course nobody bothered to inform the customer.
Marriott then found him a "......: alternative for the night. He had to either pay the taxi himself or took the shuttle back to ATL, then the other hotel's shuttle from there.
After he came home he raised hell with Chase. At the end the points used for the stay was refunded, and also same amount of the points credited as compensation.
Needless to say, this reader said he would CONFIRM directly with each hotel he booked thru Chase.

There were other readers had similar experiences that their hotel bookings were lost - one ridiculous reason for such "lost bookings" was, get this - Expedia handles the booking, Expedia needs to FAX the booking to the hotel, at this days and age - a Fax, that requires a human actually manually does that! Wow.

Happy

Booking hotels thru UR really seems a GAMBLE the more I read about it the more I feel uneasy about it.

Trying to use the CSR benefit with the upcoming trip, I have made 2 hotel bookings with UR so far -

One is for Radisson Blu Le Vendome at Cape Town, room rate incl taxes is $90xx on UR site, translate to 6054 pts. Booking.com is $103 for the same room same 1 day cancellation clause. Club Carlson pts require 38K.
I will get the hotel's reservation number and then contact the hotel via email to check on confirmation.
If hotel does not see the confirmation I will just X it and rebook on Booking using the currently available $40 off $80 before tax coupon.

The other one is for a Guest House near Gansbaii. I have saved the property in a list on UR site. When I returned to book today, the site said it was not available. In fact using the town's location De Kelders that UR input in the location space, NOTHING was available and that simply wasn't true.

When I tried to use Hermanus to search, the listing of properties did not seem to be in the similar sequence I had seen the past few days. I also did not find the property. At the same time the UR site was just acting very poorly - slow, lost the images of properties (replaced everything with a house image), unable to load the next page, etc etc. So I closed the browser and tried again.
This time I went straight to search under Hermanus - the particular property showed up. I booked it. This property has only 3 rooms. Last night there was only 1 room available per Booking.com. I should have checked Booking.com first to make sure the availability was still there before proceeding to book thru UR...
Anyway, after I did the UR booking, now both hotel's website and booking.com show Sold Out.
Still, because I had not checked first before going thru UR site, I could not be sure that the UR booking has indeed gone thru.
Luckily the hotel has an email address on its own website. I sent an email to them and hope to hear from them in a day or two.
With small properties it probably is easier to get an definite answer much quicker.

Now on a 3rd location I need to book, I am very leery to use UR due to the hotel is part of a group - reservation is handled via a central number (in South Africa) and there is no email address for individual hotel.

Worse, on Trip Advisor there was a poster said when he arrived the hotel, the hotel told him he must pay upfront as the hotel did not have a "credit arrangement" with the Travel Agency this poster used to book his stay!

All our bookings are refundable bookings with 48 hours or less cancellation clause. I would never book nonrefundable with the reward programs' portals.

I must say, booking flights while full of traps, it is an immediate confirmation whether you have the flight or not - also any mistake on the name spelling (should not happen if it is booked by yourself online?) could be caught within 24 hours. Booking hotels though, seems a high risk usage of the program.

The 1.5 is only good in theory because when it comes to actual usage, there are so much perils that make you very wary to use the "benefit".

Ratamacue

The UR portal is indeed a crap shoot for booking rooms and Chase/Connexion needs a vast improvement if they really want to provide an experience worthy of a true high end product.

Happy

Here is the process to get the real hotel reservation numbers from UR/Connexion. Need to do this on speaker phone as the hold time is long so you can multi-task while waiting.

Hope the details would help others who try to use UR benefit for hotel bookings.

1) The front line rep has no clue as many already reported. The rep thought the generic 2 long strings of number shown on the UR confirmation was it. Once she realized she had no knowledge she promptly transferred me to the "Help Desk". For that I was actually grateful that she did not attempt to give some bogus excuses.

2) Help Desk rep totally understood the needs. She needed to contact the vendor to get such information (the vendor of my 2 reservations is Expedia). She also explained it might be a "lengthy" hold time. At my request she took down my phone number in case we disconnected during the wait. (luckily that did not happen.)

3) Help Desk rep came back after over 10 min and provided the real hotel reservation number which I readily recognized it being Club Carlson reservation number format, AND a long string of number that Expedia told her also was part of the reservation.
I could pull up the reservation on Club Carlson site - View Only. It shows the room is booked on a 30% Winter Package, with an Expedia Cert which number is the one I was given. The 30% Winter Package AFAIK, is not available any more publicly, AFAIK.
Reservation is guaranteed with an MC presumably it is either Expedia's CC or Connexion CC.

4) Regardless on UR site you could add FFP number - that does NOT carry thru the hotel's system. Club Carlson reservation reps see the reservation booked thru Expedia, but they (rightfully) refuse to add the Club Carlson number to the reservation. I assume booking a flight would be different, as airlines continue to give miles / acknowledge status on bookings made outside airlines' own website.

5) The other booking at a small ocean front guest house also is made thru Expedia, which provides a numeric booking number, and UR rep said Expedia told her the booking is "Active".
The property's owner has not returned my email yet. Will follow up with the property later this week.

cab

Here is what I was directed to when I called to question this - it sounds pretty clear that as long as the trip is paid for with the Reserve card or points from the Reserve card, the insurance is included. This is the wording on the trip cancellation, lost luggage, as well as medical and medical transport sections:

Covers trips when travel arrangements for a pre-paid tour, trip or vacation have been purchased with an eligible Chase card or with rewards earned on an eligible Chase card

For full verbiage here is the web site:
https://www.chase.com/card-benefits/...reserve/travel

cab

Does anyone have any experience with a changed/canceled flight booked through UR? I don't have this problem yet but anticipate it being an issue before long. I have several flights booked on Delta through UR and they usually end up changing or canceling our flights before departure. I have read that we need to work with UR rather than the airline to reschedule the flight. It usually hasn't been too much of an issue with the airline, but I'm afraid of what may happen when going through a third party. I don't usually book third party flights I hope someone has a good story.

jamesteroh

I tried searching this forum and couldn't find the answer to my question so if it's been asked before I apologize in advance and would appreciate a link to the right thread.

I am trying to make my first reservation using the UR portal for two different flights on Delta however only the lowest fare class (which is an E both ways for both) is coming up on the one trip and an X fare on the second.

The first trip is DTW/NYC and I am fine with any fare but an E. I want to be able to sit in economy comfort and also have the same SDC flexibility in case I want to fly into EWR instead of LGA which can't be done on an E fare.

The other trip is DTW/LAX which is coming up with an X fare and there is availability to use miles to upgrade both ways but requires a T fare.

I can't figure out how to get it bring up a minimum fare class.

ChrisFlyer66

I don't think you can do that.

Appleman

You cannot pick a minimum fare class. You can select ALL, Economy, Premium Economy, Business or First. This may not be sufficient for what you are trying to do.

jamesteroh

I get free upgrades to Premium Economy on Delta anyway for any fare but E. Looks like the only way around it will be to book the lowest fare and call Delta and just pay the difference up to the fare class I want.

mia

The discussion is in this thread, and as far as I can see Connexions software will always show the lowest economy fare. Use Search this Thread with the keyword: "basic economy" including the quotation marks.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase...-2017-a-5.html

jamesteroh

Thanks! Doesn't look like it's possible to do;( I'll just book the tickets and call Delta and pay the difference to book up to the fare class I want. I have a flight on United I want to book using points as well and have no status so hopefully United will allow me to buy up from a free basic economy fare as well since their basic fare doesn't even allow a carry on

mia

THIS post suggests that Delta may not allow this.