$5 Earned Us Another Trip to Hawaii

Update 2/22/12: I finally have an explanation for the random miles. Late last week I received a phone call from Continental about the tickets for my in-laws that was discussed below. They were attempting to re-ticket and were not seeing any miles in the account. What happened was when I called and had the tickets switched back to their original flights, Continental refunded me the original 40,000 miles for each ticket. When the agent re-booked the flights, she changed the class of service and now the ticketing system was looking for 60,000 miles each for the same tickets. Fortunately, I moved all the miles over to United, and they did not take the additional miles.

For some reason, the whole re-ticketing process takes over a week to complete, where I thought it was all immediate. The agent that originally re-booked the flights basically really messed up the order, and in the end, I transferred 40,000 miles back into each of our Continental accounts, which was used to re-book the same tickets we had prior. We were also issued a refund for the $5 in taxes we were accessed.

The whole time the tickets showed up fine in our accounts as a future reservation, so there was nothing to be alarmed about other than some random extra miles sitting in our accounts.

So the lesson to be learned here is that when redeeming miles, and making changes to your account, airlines might have screwy policies about refunding the miles and re-booking taking the miles again. What customers need to be aware of is to not “use” the additional miles that show back up in your account, as it could jeopardize tickets one already has booked. There are lots of “what ifs” related to how our transaction transpired, that I do not want to evaluate all the scenarios. I am fortunate I did not have any miles in the accounts and was able to talk the agent through the process over the phone rather than seeing even more miles taken from our accounts and than having to argue to get them back.

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What a screwy day last week that started with surprise, anxiousness to see what would happened, followed by frustration and then surprise. It all started after I received an email from Continental that my in-law’s flights for Hawaii had been revised. At first glance, I did not think anything of the change as it is typical for times to get moved around prior to departure. But what happened over the proceeding hours was what really surprises me.

My in-laws were supposed to leave Hawaii, have a quick refuel and 45 minutes later be on their way to Cleveland. The change from Continental caused them to have an overnight in LAX, and not leaving for Cleveland until the following morning. They ultimately arrived in Cleveland 8 hours later than originally planned. So I called up the Continental ticketing center see what I could get accomplished. At a minimum, I was hoping to get my in-laws a night in the hotel so they would not be sleeping at the airport. An even better scenario would have been if they would have compensated us something for the major change. So I rolled the dice, and called up Continental.

After finally getting through to an agent, I mentioned to the woman that my in-law’s flights had been revised. Without even saying anything, she put me on hold and said she could get them back onto their original flights, but now there was a plane change. So I went along with the plan of switching them back to their original itinerary, and was unsure why the “computer” switched them in the first place.

Then the agent told me I owed another $2.50/ticket in taxes. So even though I did not switch the flights, and they are back on the same exact flights, I need to now pay more in taxes? I questioned the agent, and she said there was nothing she could do about taxes. I agree but I did not make the change. So I asked for miles or something to compensate me for my time and extra taxes I had to pay. Unfortunately, that was shot down too.

So as I went on with my day, I pondered in the back of my mind how wrong the scenario played out. Continental switched around their flights, and to put them back onto the same flights cost us more in taxes. At the same time though, I was only talking about $5 total in taxes on flights that cost us nothing. The point though is Continental’s change cost me more out of pocket. That is wrong in my opinion.

I considered sending a short note to Continental to discuss the situation; however, after logging into both my wife and my accounts, I noticed 40,000+ miles sitting in each of our accounts. What was this? I knew we had almost no miles in each of our Continental accounts because I had already moved them all over to United previously. So I began going back through previous transactions to see what was up with our accounts.

For some reason back in December 2011, Continental re-deposited 40,000 miles back into each of our accounts. I have no idea why there are these elusive miles in our accounts, as it does not correlate with any account activity. The only thing I could possibly think of is maybe it was a day I called up Continental to play around with dates with our flights for Hawaii, and somehow in the process, the agent credited us back all these miles even though we never made a flight change at that time. However, even this scenario does not match up because we have 3 seats reserved (or 120,000 miles) and were only credited with 80,000 miles.

Regardless, I have no idea what happened, and in the end, a $5 tax dispute was not worth my time and effort when we each had an extra 40,000 miles sitting in each of our accounts (or more seats back to Hawaii at a later date!). Maybe the good karma of sending my in-laws to Hawaii is paying us back in its own little way. 🙂