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Don't let your travel vouchers expire! - The Washington Post

If you’re holding on to pandemic travel credits that are about to expire, you don’t have to lose your money. There are ways to use your credits before they become worthless — and there are even ways to get a full refund.

Consider what happened to Cynthia Donahue and her husband in 2020. <a href="https://www.amtrak.com/home.html" target=_blank>Amtrak</a> canceled her Auto Train from Sanford, Fla., to Washington, D.C., and issued them a voucher for $834 that was set to expire this year.

Fast-forward to early 2022. The couple had no way to use the vouchers, and they were weeks away from losing their money. “We’re elderly with health concerns,” says Donahue, a retired secretary from Bedford, Mass. “A travel credit or voucher is of no help to us.”

During the pandemic, travel companies parceled out vouchers like there was no tomorrow. This allowed them to keep their customers’ money — and they knew that, because with all vouchers, there was a good chance that many customers would never get around to using them. But some travel companies didn’t offer refunds, even when legally required to do so.

That seemed to be what had happened to the Donahues. According to the rail carrier, your fare is refundable if your train is canceled. I asked Amtrak about their expiring voucher.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari says the couple booked their trip through a tour operator. “Their accounting department mistakenly issued a travel credit,” he says. “Our policy — and theirs — is to issue a refund if a trip is canceled without substitute transportation.”

Amtrak offered the couple a prompt refund. Their case is an important reminder to double-check with your tour operator or travel agent when you’re asking for a refund or credit. Sometimes, third parties such as travel advisers misunderstand the terms and conditions — and that’s easy to do, because they can be confusing.

The No. 1 strategy for extending your voucher may be to turn it into a refund. If your airline, cruise line, hotel or tour operator canceled your trip during the pandemic, chances are it owes you a full refund. But there are other methods for holding on to your money.

Start by confirming your information: Log on to your travel site, and check the status of your voucher. That’s what Larry Borden did when he suspected that his <a href="https://www.united.com/en/us" target=_blank>United Airlines</a> vouchers issued during the pandemic would soon expire.

“United had extended my credit twice without me even asking,” says Borden, a retired computer system engineer from Glendale, Ariz. “That’s what I call customer service.”

No such luck with <a href="https://www.aa.com/homePage.do" target=_blank>American Airlines</a>, where Borden and his wife also had vouchers. The airline informed him that his ticket credits would expire, so he had to book a last-minute flight to use them.

There are a few strategies travelers can use to keep their credits alive.<b> </b>Julien Brault, CEO of the personal finance management app <a href="https://hardbacon.ca/en/">Hardbacon</a>, says using credits quickly — and effectively — means taking a holistic approach to spending. For example, you can combine different payment methods.

“If you have points in a travel rewards program that offers general redemption options, use them for flights,” he recommends.

Suzanne Bucknam, CEO of the travel service <a href="https://connecticutexplorer.com/">Connecticut Explorer</a>, has been using a variation of that strategy. She’ll book a flight using an expiring credit, then cancel it, which resets the credit by a year on some airlines. “This helps to elongate the timeline so that you can finally figure out an actual use of the credits,” she says.

You can also look for extension loopholes. John Smith, a frequent traveler who edits the website <a href="https://camperguide.org/">Camper Guide</a>, faced the imminent expiration of $800 in American Airlines travel vouchers. And American, as you already know, is strict about its expiration dates.

Then a friend told him about a hack: Use part of the credit for a less expensive flight, allowing the remaining credit to get extended by another year. “So that’s what I did,” he says. “I looked for the cheapest one-way flight I could find, which cost about $53, and booked that flight. Now I have around $747 worth of travel credits that will expire next year.”

What about credit card chargebacks? You can dispute your credit card charges under the Fair Credit Billing Act. But you only have 60 days from the time you receive their credit card bill to dispute a charge. Your bank may still accept the dispute after that, but it isn’t required to by law.

That’s been a favorite strategy for travelers, according to Monica Eaton-Cardone, chief operating officer of <a href="https://chargebacks911.com/">Chargebacks911</a>, a technology company that monitors credit card chargebacks.

“The pandemic triggered a tsunami of payment disputes,” she says. “Almost immediately, credit card chargebacks jumped by 25 percent. Suddenly, it became far more commonplace for consumers to actively — and sometimes wrongfully — dispute their credit card payments and demand a full refund from their bank.”

Eaton-Cardone says the surge of chargebacks could push fares and rates higher as travel companies struggle to make up for their losses. But for now, the time limit means that using a chargeback as a way to recover your money or negotiate a credit extension is a less effective strategy.

It’s also possible that your travel company did you a favor by issuing a voucher, says Eric Goldring, owner of <a href="http://www.goldringtravel.com/">Goldring Travel</a>. In other words, this is a great time to book other types of travel. “With many cruise lines offering deals at prices that are 30 to 50 percent lower than when the travel credits were issued, they pay for more of your vacation,” he says.

“Add to that the reduced number of people on ships, tours and in the various cities, and the experiential value of using travel credits now is even greater.”

But this is a problem that shouldn’t exist. There is already a federal law that says gift cards can’t expire for five years, and some state laws have gone further and made it illegal for them to expire at all. A new federal law that does the same for travel vouchers would give consumers the time they need to use them. It would also be the right thing.

Potential travelers should take local and national public health directives regarding the pandemic into consideration before planning any trips. Travel health notice information can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s interactive map showing travel recommendations by <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/map-and-travel-notices.html">destination</a> and the CDC’s <a href="https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/noticescovid19">travel health notice webpage</a>.

Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. E-mail him at chris@elliott.org.

Christopher Elliott

Don't let your travel vouchers expire!

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How to keep and use those expiring pandemic travel credits

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Why you may be seeing more travel fees this summer - The Washington Post

When it comes to travel fees, it’s starting to feel like 2019 again.

Airlines, car rental companies and hotels are reinstating old surcharges and adding new ones to your bill as travel returns to pre-pandemic levels. You can find them everywhere, including your airline ticket and vacation rental.

“Fees have always been part of the travel experience,” says Peter Vlitas, executive vice president of partner relations at <a href="https://internova.com/">Internova Travel Group</a>, a travel agency. “But as travel comes roaring back, consumers are starting to see more of them.”

When it comes to airlines, Vlitas says his agency has seen higher surcharges, fewer offers of free checked bags and more rigorous enforcement of carry-on sizes at airports. Mandatory resort fees, which many hotels readily waived for guests during the pandemic, are also back. He’s even noticed an uptick in unexplained hotel surcharges. Additionally, car rental companies are upping their early return fees and refueling charges.

Why are travel companies doing this? It’s not just because they lost billions during the pandemic when Americans stayed home or took staycations. Their cost of doing business increased. Restaurants had to pay higher wages or face mass resignations. Airlines and hotels had to spend more on sanitation and touchless check-in technology. And now there’s inflation.

“They have to find a way to offset their extra costs of covid,” says Narendra Khatri, principal at <a href="https://www.insubuy.com/">Insubuy</a>, a travel insurance company. “Often, that comes in the way of extra fees.”

<a href="https://www.hertz.com/" target=_blank>Hertz</a> may have the most complained-about pandemic-era travel fees. When Paula Gill called the company recently to change her reservation, a representative said it would add a $50 surcharge — 5 percent of her rental cost — if she wanted to handle the change by phone.

“No way,” says Gill, a retired human resources consultant from Trappe, Pa. “Maybe that’s how they think they’ll emerge from bankruptcy, but it’s no way to treat customers.”

Hertz says other travel companies charge similar fees. “It’s consistent with similar policies in the travel industry, such as airlines and hotels, for making reservations by phone, and encourages customers to reserve on our website at no additional cost, where our best rates can be found,” says Hertz spokeswoman Lauren Luster.

But as of now, no other major car rental company does this. Gill bypassed the company’s reservation center and called the car rental location directly, avoiding the fee.

Hotels are also getting creative with their new fees. Bob Bacheler stayed at a convention hotel in Orlando recently. After breakfast, his server handed him and his wife a bill with a 10 percent “service fee” on top of an automatic 18 percent gratuity.

“I am used to gratuities for larger parties, but two people?” says Bacheler, managing director for <a href="https://www.flyingangels.com/" target=_blank>Flying Angels</a>, a medical travel service. “I still do not know what the 10 percent service fee for the meal was for. Just a fee the hotel made up?”

Bacheler felt as if he had no choice but to pay the fee, but he says he’ll ask before he has his next hotel breakfast.

“We may not be able to control these fee increases,” says Rajeev Shrivastava, CEO of <a href="https://www.visitorscoverage.com/">VisitorsCoverage</a>, an insurance marketplace, “but you have options.”

Knowing that companies are trying to make up for lost revenue is the first step in avoiding nuisance fees. Many travelers assume incorrectly that airlines and hotels are desperate to have them back and have slashed their prices to get them in the door. That may have been true last summer, and it was definitely true during the summer of 2020. But not now.

Sergio Diaz recently checked into a full-service hotel in Los Angeles, where a representative informed him that he would have to pay a $50 cleaning fee.

“The challenge with a fee like that is that hotels bury them in the fine print,” says Diaz, CEO of <a href="http://keynotespeakers.info/" target=_blank>Keynote Speakers</a>, a talent agency. “Then, because we’re in such a rush to get to our destination, there’s no time to debate, so we just pay it.”

The fees may be justified in some situations, considering higher inflation levels. For example, the cost of cleaning a vacation rental rose about 18 percent on average, to nearly $61 for a one-bedroom property during the fourth quarter of last year, according to <a href="https://turnoverbnb.com/national-vacation-rental-cleaning-costs-q4-2021/">TurnoverBnB</a>, a site that specializes in vacation rental cleaning. Still, according to vacation rental customers, fee increases have more than kept pace.

Now is the time to read the terms before your travel purchase, insiders say.

“That amazing deal you just scored on your hotel may be because of the lack of included services in the price,” warns Prasun Choudhary, president of the hotel chain <a href="https://www.oyorooms.com/us/">OYO International</a>. “Double-check with hotel staff to see which additional amenities are included in your purchase.”

You can fight these new fees. If a travel company doesn’t adequately disclose the surcharge or tells you about it after your purchase, then you have a strong case for having the extra fee removed from your bill. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/top-execs-are-more-responsive-to-customer-complaints-than-ever-before/2018/06/20/569cfaac-6fed-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html">Sending an email to an executive or contacting the company on social media</a> can also be effective tools. If those tactics don’t work, enlist the help of your bank by disputing the charges on your credit card. You have 60 days to file your dispute.

But for the time being, it seems as if the travel industry is moving full speed ahead on the new fees. And experts say they’re everywhere.

“You should be diligent in your budgeting efforts,” says Steve Schwab, CEO of vacation rental company <a href="https://casago.com/" target=_blank>Casago</a>. “Additional fees at hotels, rental car companies or at the airport may creep up when you are not expecting them.”

That seems to be part of the travel industry’s fee strategy this year. Almost no one is expecting any extras, so what better time to broadside your customers with them? But now you know.

Christopher Elliott

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