Happy

Background is in Post 271 - specifically the booking made on an independent oceanfront property at De Kelders, a small town 40 min drive South of Hermanus, a much more famous tourist town on the West Cape, South Africa.

This is going to be long. I hope the details would help those who intend to use UR to book their hotels, would understand there are some important areas one needs to pay close attention, and to evaluate whether one would use UR to book certain types of property. Hopefully others would not have to go thru what I have gone thru once they understand the perils involved.

Time Line -

07/10/17 Made booking on UR site. Refundable rate with cancellation as full refund if canceled before International Date Line West (GMT-12) on Aug 11. After that it was 50% penalty. I had to google to find out what International Date Line West meant as it normally was local time. It turns out is a line primarily used by ships as it only touches a few islands in the Pacific - it is almost the EARLIEST time a calendar date changes to the new date - so this property is using the EARLIEST possible time as cancellation deadline. A sneaky way that I should have caught but I didn't.

A few days later the cancellation policy changed to 50% if canceled before the same deadline, and 50% if canceled after the deadline - the language does not make any sense, and is different from what is shown on Booking.com and other OTAs site. It looks to me the property has changed the policy by just changed the AFTER to BEFORE and left everything else the same. This makes the whole clause read very weird and the supervisors at UR agreed to that.

Back to the time line -

Right after the booking I called UR and asked for the Help Desk so the rep there could contact the vendor (Expedia in this case) to get the Real confirmation number and the status of the booking. Was given a string of numbers as the confirmation number, as well as "Active" status.

Given this is a guest house has only 3 rooms with a prime location all ocean front, facing the bay where about 200+ Southern Right Whale would congregated in the Bay directly in front of the property between Jul and Oct, I wanted tot make sure the property has received the booking and I also need to coordinate the arrival time as owner does not live on the premises.

The property has its own website which has both an email address and a web form for booked guests to send in their requests. Trip Advisor also has the same email address for the property. Using that email address I sent the property emails, attached both JPG and PDF files of the UR booking confirmation, asking the property please confirm everything was in order and to give me a window of check in time.

My emails and the message submitted thru the web form never get any response. The email address is good as there is no delivery error from Comcast. The web form generated a "Thank You for Your Request" screen indicating it did go thru. But there is never a response from the property.

07/13/17 After unable to initiate a communication with the property, I called UR Help Desk, hoping Connexion thru Expedia would be able to establish a contact with the owner. Meanwhile the property shown as Sold Out on other OTA sites. All I want is the owner to acknowledge whether she has received the booking or not and then I can decide what to do next. I am really concerned about the possibility that I would arrive and the owner said, sorry we did not have your reservation. While it would be bad situation if this happened at a US / Canada location, such as what I read about a Marriott ATL never got the UR booking and was Sold Out, or a poster in this forum about their 4 days booking only the 1st day was received by the hotel which was also Sold Out - it would be MUCH WORSE if this happens to my booking at a location thousands and thousands miles away with 6 hours time difference AHEAD of us.

The 1st supervisor I talked to, seemed to understand my concern. She told me she would contact the vendor and if the booking was not good, she would process a full refund. I asked how long it took to get the refund. She said instantly. (cannot be more far from the truth.)
I was put on a lengthy hold while she talked to the vendor. About 17 min into the hold, the call was disconnected!

Called back and talked to a 2nd supervisor of a different call center (there are 4 call centers, Columbus, Tulsa, St. Louis and Boise). Repeated the story. The 2nd supervisor wondered WHY the 1st supervisor had to contact the vendor. Then she put me on lengthy hold again. Came back to tell me the property refused to refund the 50% penalty despite the condition at the time of my booking was not as it was shown now. I told the supervisor I really wanted a written confirmation directly from the hotel to confirm this booking. Nothing from UR would serve the purpose. Need it directly from the hotel - why would they not reply my multiple emails?! If the property fails to even provide it, how would I trust my booking is good, and then now they want to hold 50% of the payment while refuse to confirm the booking?!
The 2nd supervisor told me she would send a request to the "Escalating Team" for a full refund of the booking which even to her, looked like a non-starter. (Little did I know, the 1st supervisor already Xed the booking - found that out days later.)
She told me to call back the following Thursday 07/20/17.

Over the following days I monitored the hotel's own website as well as several OTA sites on the availability. I noticed that the availability info was NOT real time as in the subsequent days I saw the availability changed from Sold Out to available to Sold Out to available multiple times, that should not happen as the property changed its cancellation policy to 50% penalty upon cancellation before a deadline and then 100% penalty if canceled within 7 days before arrival as shown on Booking.com - therefore I dont believe people would book and then immediately cancel given once you book, you already lost 50% of your prepayment.

On Tuesday 07/16/17 I called the UR Help Desk again at EST 7:30am, Cape Town time 1:30pm. This way for sure UR or Expedia should be able to get hold the property owner and get this thing straightened out once and for all.
The 3rd supervisor saw the notes left by both the 1st and 2nd supervisor. I was not told the content of them though. Then she told me she needed to check with the vendor. After 15 min she came back to tell me, the reservation was already cancelled on 07/13/17, by a supervisor of UR. The Vendor (Expedia) gave the reason as "Canceled by Member". I was shocked by this news because when I called back after the phone disconnected during the hold time with the 1st supervisor, the 2nd supervisor never told me the reservation was canceled by the previous supervisor (at a different call center). Surely the 1st supervisor who canceled the booking would have left notes. Indeed the 3rd supervisor I talked to 3 days later, saw the name of the supervisor who canceled the booking. All the 2nd supervisor told me was she would initiate a request to the "Escalating Team" for full refund of the booking.

Meanwhile, the booking on UR website remains an Active booking. There is absolutely NO WAY I could tell from UR portal to know the booking is already canceled. Even the UR front line "Travel Advisor" sees it as an "Active" booking.

The 3rd supervisor told me she could give me full refund of the booking given the circumstances. She told me she sent a request for full refund and if by next week the refund not showing up, "by all means, call us back.".

Today is Thursday, the original day the 2nd supervisor instructed me to call back "between 9am to 12 noon" on the resolution of the request she sent to the Escalation Team on 07/13/17 (the date the booking was canceled by the 1st supervisor I talked to).

This time I got a very helpful supervisor who went thru the notes, asked me which options I prefer - whether I wanted to reinstate the booking or to get a full refund. I explained to him after the frustrating experiences trying to establish contact with the owner and met with a stone wall and the fact that the owner changed her cancellation policy, my gut feeling is, the owner does NOT want to sell her room at the "wholesale" rate she originally contracted with Expedia. Meanwhile she also wanted to pocket 50% of the prepayment. This does not give me a warm feeling for the stay. I would rather get back a full refund and find an alternative.

The 4th supervisor who is a guy, said he fully understood and agreed about the possible clauses the owner rescinded on the booking. He needed to contact the Escalation Team first. Luckily this time the hold was only 8 min. He came back said on 07/16/17, the Escalation Team had been able to contact the property which agreed on a full refund. So he said another request was sent and I should expect the refund in 7 to 10 business days, as this is how long it took for the property to refund the Vendor / Connexion the money it took. I said that was not acceptable after the many hours I had to spent and the stress I had to suffer, just to try to verify a firm booking with the property. Could he initiate the refund NOW, especially I will leave for the trip in 2 weeks time and really could not continue to spend time to follow up on this mess. To his credit, the guy is willing to go above and beyond to help - he said since the property already agreed to a full refund, I would process the refund now, the points should return to your account shortly. Within 15 seconds he said that, I saw the point balance changed to reflect the refund. So indeed, if the supervisor is willing, like the 1st supervisor who told me, the refund is INSTANT.

After that, we chatted a bit. I told the guy I learned a lesson in using reward program to book hotel stays - do NOT book independent properties because it is very difficult to confirm a booking and impossible to initiate contact should the property choose to ignore you, when it does not want the booking. With Chain properties, at least you have a central reservation center to call, and the confirmation reference can pull up a reservation on the Chain's website, so you know immediately if your booking thru the UR portal has gone through or not.

The guy agreed. He said now a lot of these smallish B&Bs and Guest Houses got on the OTA booking platforms, but many times they are not very professional and often the properties do not turn out as what are depicted online. People only found this out until they arrive. Or in the bad case like the one I just went thru, the properties dont want to honor the reservations and it is up to the guests to figure this out ahead of time. He said they do get cases like mine often with those "B-class" properties. I cannot thank him enough of taking care of this right away.

Lesson learned here is, ONLY book Chain properties where status does not matter, i.e. no elite benefits or everyone gets the brekkie anyway - so you can readily verify the reservation is a good one, and able to print it out from the Chain's website. DO NOT book independent properties thru Reward booking such as UR or TYP - because they use wholesale rates with the "vendors" - can be Expedia/Priceline/ OTAs which names are not familiar, anyone whose rate is the cheapest. There are at least 2 or more layers between your booking and the property. Anything goes wrong it is much harder to get fixed, plus the independent properties are not bound by any Chain agreement, so they can change their cancellation policy at will without much consequences. In my case the property not only does not want to sell its room at the whole sale price, but also wants to pocket a 50% prepayment!

I would stick with Booking.com for independent properties at locations where only independents are available. Booking.com would stand behind you and take care of issues should the properties try to pull any sneaky acts, like change the cancellation policy from what is shown on Booking.com site. One big plus is, all the communication between the guest and the owner is going thru Booking.com platform, and their customer service can see the whole thing therefore much easier to point out any discrepancies from the owner versus the conditions stated on Booking.com site.

Those who can effectively use UR portal for your 1.5c worth of pts, good for you. For me, so far my experiences have been miserable. Though by reporting this I hope it can benefit others when they try to use UR Travel booking benefits.

Safe Travel everyone!

Happy

He probably meant he monitored his bookings on UR site. Though that is NOT enough. You can read my long post on how a Canceled booking continues to show as "Active" on UR site, even after the property finally agreed on a full refund, 3 days after it is canceled by an UR supervisor due to the property refused to establish communication with the guest or UR (and the Vendor).

I gather you mean "garden" means "monitor".

Read my lengthy post on a hotel booking - my reservation was canceled by UR itself yet the reservation continued showing as Active on UR site, even after I finally received a full refund of the points, when the hotel agreed to full refund - it remains as "Active" online.

To make sure your booking remains Active - if it is a Chain hotel, get the Real booking ref and then pull up the reservation on the Chain's website, or call the central reservation line and the rep there could tell you if it is a good booking or not despite they would not be able to touch it.

If it is an independent property, you have no other option but CALL UR Help Desk and the supervisor at the Help Desk would contact the vendor (where UR booking went), the vendor then can confirm whether it is an Active or a canceled booking - the vendor can tell UR who cancels the reservation if it is canceled - REGARDLESS it still shows up as Active on UR site.

serpens

I did read your long post, and I thank you for taking the time to write it. It was a scary tale, and I would rather learn from your experience than go through anything like that myself.

Ratamacue

Thanks for taking the time to write this. I'm quite certain (given the millions of new CSR customers) that this is going to bite an awful lot of people.

Happy

That is the purpose - those who read it, should definitely learn something out from it so to avoid being put thru similar process. It is a stressful experience.

The 4th supervisor mentioned about they did receive more complaints on the "B-class" properties during our chit chat after he had issued the full refund. He said many of these B-class properties try to get business from all channels but they do not always bound by the rules. When they do not honor the bookings, there really is nothing Connexion and its vendors could do. He even said this to me, as "now as you travel more, you would learn more, and then you would know what to do in certain situations." He agreed with my hypothesis that the owner felt the whole sale rate was too low and did not want to honor the booking, deliberately to ignore my emails so to make me go away. Even worse, it at first refused to refund until being contacted again by the "Escalation Team" presumably putting pressure to Expedia which in turn putting pressure to the owner.

The only reason I even thought about to confirm the booking was due to reading someone arrived Marriott Atlanta and found out he had no reservation when the hotel was sold out. He spent 45 min at the lobby talking to UR and eventually the conclusion was when Expedia FAX the reservation over, the hotel was already overbooked, and rejected the reservation. Somehow that rejection NEVER was communicated back to UR, and of course the customer was totally in the dark.

There was also a poster reported here that his hotel only received the first night of booking out of 4 nights he booked. Hotel was sold out so as area hotels. It was a bad situation that he had to drive around the next day to find a place to stay so to save the family vacation.

I initially thought, great this property even has its own website and email address. so to confirm a booking should be easy.... Little did I ever think about is, these independent properties the owners can do whatever they want and if the owner is dishonest, it would end up in the scenario I just experienced.

In case you find yourself in such situation, only the supervisors at the Help Desk could help you. The front line "Travel Advisors" cannot do a thing. so dont waste time with them after verified your booking and ID. They dont even seem to be able to transmit the booking id to the Help Desk as I have to give it again on each talk with the Help Desk. There is no manager at the Help Desk but there is an Escalation Team which I do not know where it is located but it is where it has the power to sort things out, so to speak.

FlyerTalkUserName

Appreciate everyone's contributions to this thread and Happy's detailed report. Just to provide a data point I recently stayed in two independent, medium-sized hotels (both with over 500 TripAdvisor reviews) in Thailand and booked both through Chase. Because of the experiences here I found email addresses on the hotel websites and emailed them about a month before arrival. Both promptly responded confirming my reservations in detail. I booked suites at both hotels and wanted to make sure I wasn't in a standard room.

I mentioned this up thread but the other reason I emailed the hotels was because a family member arrived at the DoubleTree Las Vegas Airport to find out they were in a smoking room when their reservation clearly said non-smoking on the UR portal. They initially mandated a fax from connexions/chase. Finally after an hour in the lobby on the phone with chase the hotel manager gave in and just switched them to one of the numerous non-smoking rooms available. While a smoking room would have only been an inconvenience, it's still annoying.

Whether the hotel is big or small, confirm as many reservation details as possible directly with your hotel as soon as you can.

Happy

There are a few things in your DPs that remind us how vigilant one needs to be when using these reward programs.

Definitely contact the property immediately after the booking. Get more details from the Help Desk of the Connexion, then email the property to verify / confirm everything as listed in the booking. If the property belongs to a chain, you should be able to pull up the reservation using the Real confirmation number that only the Help Desk could get it from the vendor. For example, your family member should be able to pull up the reservation on either Honors site or on Double Tree site. Print out that confirmation which should show the Non-smoking room booked. Then the manager had no ground to harass the guest at check in. If the confirmation pulled from the "official" sites shows something different from the UR confirmation, then you know there is a problem and you need to get it fixed before arriving to check in.

Same thing applied to booking the airline tickets - always check the airline's own website on the fare class as to whether this is a business / coach / basic coach without checked bag, etc etc.

It was the complete non-responsive from the property I booked, that alarmed me that something was wrong.

At first I thought Expedia had failed to transmit the reservation to the property as that happened a lot from what I read on the net among the issues encountered using UR portal to book hotels.

It did not occur to me until after the 4th email still did not get a reply, that I started to wonder, Could it be the property simply do NOT want this booking due to the contracted whole sale rate being too low to them now? Then I saw the change on the cancellation policy. At that point there was no more doubt in my mind that the booking was no good and I had to fight with UR to get a full refund on this.

In the case of the Double Tree your family member booked a nonsmoking but encountering unreasonable "harassment" from the manager at check in, this is the "Priceline Room" symptom. The manager wanted to give the least-sellable room (smoking room) to the customer while preserve the more sellable nonsmoking rooms for walk in guests. (He should have already known the confirmed bookings of the night but some locations can see a lot of walk-ins).

I have read about DPs of people getting the worst rooms on the properties when booking thru UR, and to certain degree TYP also. It looks to me that while both Chase and Citi use Connexion to handle the reward bookings, Chase' contract might have emphasis on the "cheap" side.

We the travellers have to learn how to protect ourselves. The only way to make sure everything is what we see on our bookings is to verify the details with the actual providers - be it a hotel or an airline - to ensure everything is indeed in order.

dministrator

I need to book SIN-CMB-TRZ on Sri Lankan (UL) on economy in September.

Vayama quotes it for US$150. UL website quotes it for US$153. Vayama has $12 cash back via TopCashBack for air fares.

Chase Travel Center has the same flight for US$167.90 or 11,193 Ultimate Rewards points thanks to the Reserve card. I have enough UR points at the moment to cover this.

Which option is better in this case? What would the veterans choose?

1. paying cash or
2. pay with UR points, even though the price quoted by Chase is higher?

Thank you.

mattfusf

I am planning a multi-leg trip from New York to Tokyo and Hong Kong on United

My outbound leg has upgrade award availability and my return looks to have a fairly empty business class, so waitlist possibility (this is a few months out) looks good.

If I book economy via Chase using UR, can I still upgrade on United's website using points, or does booking through Chase require another process?

Thanks

Matt

madrev

Hello all,

I'm looking at a fairly pricey one-way from Auckland to San Francisco over the holidays, intending to spend my Chase points. Looks like I can book either through Air New Zealand or United through UR -- both are presented as options and the price is the same.

I had a truly scarring experience with United reservations/support,
also involving an Air New Zealand flight, a couple of years ago (thread here if you're curious), so my instinct is to book directly with ANZ and stay as far from United as I can. However, I'm worried it'll impact my Mileage Plus earn rate -- this page shows different rates based on whether it's booked through UA or not, and I can't really tell if one is better than the other. Anyone have experience with this or any other decision-impacting factors I'm not thinking of?

trikotret

I tried to book 3 nights at a hotel with Chase ur. The price was 20 more a night compared to booking directly to hotel. The same room is none refundable with UR and refundable if I book directly to hotel. Geeez.

Rommie2k6

Is there a workaround for Chase CSR (Redeem UR for travel) which keeps booking into basic economy?

Can I pay the $15 token fee to the airline directly to upgrade to main cabin?

mia

If you use Search this Thread with the term "basic economy" you will find intermittent discussion. You may be able to book a standard fare class by telephone.

Changing the fareclass afterwards will depend on the policy of the specific airline and (perhaps) your elite status with the carrier, but some airlines won't touch travel agency bookings unless you pay a fee and some won't "upgrade" Basic Economy.

See also:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase...ooking-ur.html

Kacee

Which airline?

A UA Basic Economy fare cannot be upfared. The only "change" option is to cancel it within 24 hours of booking.

Not familiar with AA/DL policies.

serpens

I found this thread after spending 45 minutes trying to pick anything other than Economy (or ALL) and failing. For flights from New York (all airports) to London (all airports) next May, there was nothing but economy offered on any itinerary. Then I searched Toronto to Chicago because I actually booked this trip in business class last year on the UR portal, but now only economy was offered. The boxes for higher classes were there, but they would not respond to clicks.

It baffles me that Chase's travel agent does not offer anything above economy to people holding the Sapphire Reserve card. For that matter, it baffles me that Chase's travel agent does not offer anything above economy to everyone. It seems to me that a sale would be a sale, and someone who just holds a free card might want to travel in premium, business, or first.