zergrusher2010

I booked a trip using UR points w/ Chase Travel. You have to call to add a lap child (at 10% + tax presumably), which I did and Chase took the fee and added the infant to the itinerary. My wife wanted to add children's meals and we found out that the lap child does not actually have a ticket! After over 3 hours on the phone in some overseas call center, the first agent was useless because she "needed to update her system" just to fix the meals, and I was transferred to a "specialist." The Chase "specialist" looked at the meals but also told me that because of a schedule change happened around the same time as the infant booking, the lap child has no ticket number! I reviewed my emails and I could find no ticket number. They basically said that our tickets need to be reissued and the lap child then needs to be added back on. They reached out to the airline to do this and add the lap child and also cannot do it without "more authorization" which can take days.

The other option Chase Travel said is to let the airline just take over the whole ticket. They would then reissue new tickets to us at no charge for the three of us that have normal economy ticket fares. My concern over this is I used cash and points to purchase w/ Chase Travel and am uncertain how any refunds for or travel credit for cancelled or changed flights might be handled. Chase Travel said that if the ticket were refunded (due to fault of airline, weather, etc.) it would get refunded to Chase and they would refund it back to me after calling, or the airline would just reschedule the credit themselves. However, I am somewhat inclined to switch over to the airline to take out this incompetent third party that is not adding much value other than letting me use points to travel which has already happened. The other issue with the airline is Chase will have to refund the lap child charge (that they charged and did nothing with apparently) and then I have to call the airline and add the child back at whatever the fee is going to be because he doesn't know the amount. I think since fares have gone up since then, this lap child ticket will cost more than what we paid originally but I am uncertain about whether the fee is based on current fares or fares at booking. This was a 3 hour and 40 minute call total of lots of holds to "investigate", "make case numbers", etc.. Insane amount of incompetence.

Also, there is not call back number for this "specialist" working my case. I have to call the main number and give my Trip ID. I have to wait for him to call back or call in waste more time. I have a feeling this might be a dead end.

This happened yesterday, and I told Chase to try to fix it on their end (since they screwed up) before we think about switching over to the airline and dealing with this lap child nonsense all over again since there are too many unknowns here. Chase Travel used to allow this to be done on their site which used before without any issues. Now they make you call and their call centers are in the Philippines and the customer service is really bad. I have never had a problem like this before with third party booking. Which route should I go? Should I wait a day or two and see if they can fix or have them allow the airline to take over the ticket? What are the implications of this? We travel towards the end of the month so I need to resolve this ASAP.

Thanks!
Jim Zerg