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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: jaxon60]
#147380
10/26/2017 07:41 AM
10/26/2017 07:41 AM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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Posts: 515
Eastern Caribbean
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jaxon60 said: We had WestJet tickets. The refund was quick when they cancelled. We booked quickly thereafter on Delta. We are on the west coast so we have a bit of a milk run (but almost always do). I think we booked at the right time, though, because we went from regular seats to Delta Comfort seats for $500 less per person that our original WestJet tickets. I have looked and it seems prices have gone up significantly on Delta since we booked. We also lost our mid Feb WestJet tickets and booked on Delta for less than the WJ tickets had cost. The penalty is an hour and a half in Atlanta, but that's okay. This thread has got me a bit worried about my kids' separately-purchased AC tix though. I'm gonna have to check.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147382
10/26/2017 05:26 PM
10/26/2017 05:26 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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Ritchard said:jaxon60 said: We had WestJet tickets. The refund was quick when they cancelled. We booked quickly thereafter on Delta. We are on the west coast so we have a bit of a milk run (but almost always do). I think we booked at the right time, though, because we went from regular seats to Delta Comfort seats for $500 less per person that our original WestJet tickets. I have looked and it seems prices have gone up significantly on Delta since we booked. We also lost our mid Feb WestJet tickets and booked on Delta for less than the WJ tickets had cost. The penalty is an hour and a half in Atlanta, but that's okay. This thread has got me a bit worried about my kids' separately-purchased AC tix though. I'm gonna have to check. There's no problem with my kids AC rouge flights in mid Feb according to the agent.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: LINNY]
#147383
10/26/2017 05:30 PM
10/26/2017 05:30 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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LINNY said: Try Jet Blue out of Buffalo For kicks I just looked up a mid-Feb flight from Buffalo. On a Saturday to Saturday trip it's $2,050 US! Mondays thru Thursdays look like a fraction of the cost.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: BGH]
#147389
10/29/2017 04:47 PM
10/29/2017 04:47 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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Traveler
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Well, this lack of clarity at AC is sort of concerning me.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: BGH]
#147392
10/30/2017 11:34 AM
10/30/2017 11:34 AM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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So RBC travel now tells me that the AC flights I had booked for my kids are confirmed as cancelled, but that their only option at this point is re-booking with AC at a later date. That doesn't really work for us, so I have to see if they do full goodwill refunds over the next couple of days.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147393
10/30/2017 12:08 PM
10/30/2017 12:08 PM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 82,887 Central Florida!
Carol_Hill
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Huhm, under US law, if your flight is cancelled, they have to give you your money back. Canada does not have a similar law?
Carol Hill
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147394
10/30/2017 12:14 PM
10/30/2017 12:14 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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All right, now I tried AC, just to see what would happen. They show me that the flight is still going, that it has NOT been cancelled. This is ridiculous. I guess I need to call again.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Carol_Hill]
#147395
10/30/2017 12:23 PM
10/30/2017 12:23 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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Carol_Hill said: Huhm, under US law, if your flight is cancelled, they have to give you your money back. Canada does not have a similar law? The RBC travel agent told me that they hadn't got to refunds *yet*. Suggested that so many were cancelled that it might take a while to work through notifications and refunds for everyone. It leaves me in a bind.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147396
10/30/2017 12:26 PM
10/30/2017 12:26 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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Posts: 515
Eastern Caribbean
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So next I reached out to AC by Twitter direct message. They say they will be back on track as of Dec 19. I am finding all this hard to believe, and its getting frustrating. I just want a family vacation.
I also reached out to the rental agent in SXM just in case we can't get tix for the boys, can we have a more modest apartment. They have now offered a refund that they weren't prepared to do some weeks ago. BUT WE STILL WANT TO GO!
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147397
10/30/2017 12:57 PM
10/30/2017 12:57 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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More re: Air Canada. The Twitter person says that the cancellations mentioned on the website are for SJU, not SXM, though it clearly says St Maarten. My head is spinning.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: BGH]
#147399
10/30/2017 02:10 PM
10/30/2017 02:10 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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BGH said: Ritchard I have had the same responses as you have listed. It appears the online agents are not up to date on the latest publish policy .
Here is my latest response ....Upon verification, our actual goodwill policy applies to all flights for departures until April 2, 2018. We invite you to contact our Reservations Desk at 1-888-247-2262 to review your options. Please accept my apologies for the misunderstanding. /cp
The story continues ... Air Canada said it was more proper for me to deal with RBC Travel as they were my booking agent. I have decided to "let it ride" for a couple of days.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147400
10/31/2017 03:20 PM
10/31/2017 03:20 PM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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Well, the Email just arrived from RBC travel that I HAD TO CALL RIGHT AWAY!
RBC says, yup, your flights are cancelled. We can only rebook different dates. I tell her different dates don't work, we have to go on University reading week. She says you'll have to call Air Canada.
I call Air Canada, the agent there says she cannot process a refund, they can only pay back the Agent, RBC travel. This doesn't really work for me either.
I put Air Canada agent on hold, ring up RBC again, tell the story for the umpteenth time, then conference call the two agents, AC and RBC. I am sitting here listening to the two of them speak in secret Travel Agent language while they figure me out. You can type a pretty long post while on hold with these folks.
Looks like I will be getting a cash refund, rather than the AVION points I bought the tix with. I think the points are actually a more valuable currency than cash, but whatever. **No wait, it's turning out to be some magical combo of cash and points.
Now I'm not really sure what to do. Do I use this refund to try and get the kids some more tickets, or do I just go someplace else and give up on my beloved SXM for this year? I keep wanting to be optimistic, but I am exhausted by all the changes and uncertainty.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147401
11/02/2017 08:43 AM
11/02/2017 08:43 AM
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 515 Eastern Caribbean
Ritchard
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Posts: 515
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Well I hope this is the final chapter in this particular part of our adventure.
It took another day for me to confirm slightly different dates and times that would work for my boys. After dinner I went to work on the RBC travel site sorting out some flight options. Looks like for us, Delta is the only way to get to SXM. Boys travel down together a couple of days later than anticipated. One stays a week, one can only stay for 6 days having to get back to school.
I call up RBC Travel for help booking because two related trips/travellers with slightly different dates is a booking challenge. As well, I still would like to use the points that I have saved up and had used for the now-cancelled AC flights, and are now in points refund limbo. After all, that's why I pay these credit card fees year after year.
After being on hold listening to that awkward music for a while I am amused to get connected to the same agent that dealt with me on Tuesday - the one that I ended up conferencing in with the Air Canada agent. She remembered me, and even remembered the name of the agent from Air Canada. She told me that she was going to set up a special credit note for the points such that when they were credited to my account for the cancelled Air Canada flights, I could later use them to refund the cash that I would have to pay for these Delta flights that I have picked out for the boys. She couldn't book the flights for me though, for some reason I could not understand in my growing exhaustion with this matter; I have to call Delta to book.
I call Delta and get the nicest, most patient agent one could hope for. It was a bit tricky booking these flights for the boys with different dates, first purchasing one boy's trip, then the others, then getting them seated together on the way down, then getting the one boy home alone, and the other one seated with us on the way back. Turns out there's only one reasonable set of flights YYZ>SXM on Delta, same flight numbers every day connecting in Atlanta. We're all on the same set of flights, on several different days.
I was on the phone with Audrey the Agent for an hour and a quarter, during which time we became pals. I have always said you get more flies with honey; if you're nice, patient, and friendly with customer service people on the phone, you often get service that exceeds expectations. I eventually got all the flights just as I needed them, all slightly upgraded to Delta Comfort+, and it all came out a little less money than I had thought it would based on my online shopping of earlier in the evening. It was crazy how the prices of the boys tickets bounced around $50 or $60 up and down as we kept slightly juggling the options. I told Audrey I'd buy her lunch when she finally realizes her dream to visit Canada.
So this trip to SXM has been a pretty big pain-in-the-neck so far with all of our flights having been booked, cancelled and re-booked. After all this we are excited to get back to this place that we enjoy so much, and with our boys. We're thinking this may be our last family trip together for some time as at least one will be striking out in his own after school ends in April. And really, I can't complain too much about the pain-in-the-neck; this inconvenience is really a first-world problem. In then end, I still have a house and a business, something that so many on SXM cannot say right now.
I keep wondering what Orient Village/Beach is going to be like by the time we get there in a little less than 4 months. Daily reports of things re-opening is quite encouraging, but it is still going to be nothing like the place we have grown to know so well.
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Re: Canadian flights
[Re: Ritchard]
#147402
11/02/2017 09:19 AM
11/02/2017 09:19 AM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 82,887 Central Florida!
Carol_Hill
Traveler
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Posts: 82,887
Central Florida!
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Ritchard--glad you were finally able to get it all worked out! Hope you enjoy your trip.
Carol Hill
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