Japan Airlines has made major changes to their frequent flyer program starting in 2024 by introducing a new Life Status program, and tweaking the membership requirements for JAL Global Club. There likely was an overabundance of elites who qualified for lifetime elite benefits by earning JAL Sapphire once, and JAL wanted to rectify the situation (see blog post by TRAICY).
I fortunately was able to qualify for JAL Sapphire through the Fly On program in 2023, and as a Japanese resident applied for JAL Global Club membership by switching my credit card to a JAL Global Club card. While JAL promised that members who were JAL Global Club members in 2023 would keep their status, it remained to be seen how exactly JAL would implement this. We weren’t sure if membership would continue past 2024 just for holding a JAL Global Club credit card or living outside Japan and renewing with miles.
Category: status
Shady Business Practices by @Hertz Car Rental in Vancouver
I think this will be my first time blasting a company for shady business practices and not making it right. I hope it will be my last.
Update: As a result of this post, the manager of the Vancouver Airport Hertz location emailed me and honored the original booking rate. Still annoyed it had to come to this, though.
Background
I went to Vancouver, BC this weekend on a last-minute wedding anniversary trip with my husband. They don’t have Uber, and I soon found out that it was likely because the local taxis and car rentals are so inexpensive, that Uber would have a hard time surviving.
As I was perusing car rentals, I first checked my favorite, Costco Travel. I found a great Alamo deal for CA$41.02 (about US$30) for 2 days. That’s like $15 per day – insane! Most of the other companies were not significantly higher than that price. And it was truly last minute — the rental was to start the next day!
As I was booking my flights on United, it gave me an opportunity to book a car rental with Hertz as well, so out of curiosity, and because I have Hertz President’s Circle Status (thanks to Marriott Platinum), I checked the price. It was a total of CA$51.17 (about US$37) for the 2 days, plus it would give me a bonus of 1000 United miles! I value United miles at more than 1 cent per point, so this made the Hertz deal much more appealing, and I booked it.
The Rental Experience
The rental went smoothly. They gave me a new white Hyundai Elantra, which was a great car. We were very happy with it. Spent a total of US $8 on gas for our 2 days.
Returning The Car
We drove the car to the return area at the YVR airport, and the lady was unable to find my reservation in her system, so she wrote down the mileage and the fact my gas was full and told me to go to the counter to get my receipt. She said everything was perfect about the car. We returned the car 1 hour and 10 minutes early.
I went to the counter, and had to wait like 15 minutes for two very slow customers in front of me, one of whom was yelling at the staff for some overcharge.
When I got up to the counter, the staff was unable to find my reservation either, so they made a copy of my contract, and said the manager would take care of it and I would receive my receipt in my account or by email. I said, okay no problem, and rushed off to clear security and customs and enjoy the lounges.
Getting Charged Over 3X
Well, I got my receipt in my email, and was absolutely shocked when I saw the total charge of CA$174.78 (about US$128) on it!! HUH????
I immediately contacted their Twitter concierge with screenshots of both my reservation price of CA$51.17 and the final receipt of CA$174.78. At first, they responded, “What charges don’t look correct?”
I explained that my reservation was for CA$16.20 per day, and that the receipt stated that it was CA$54.99 per day.
I’ll let you read the rest of the conversation.
Ongoing…
This whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth, and their team’s resolution of giving me a partial refund and giving me a final price of nearly double what I was supposed to be charged is ridiculous (they are still charging me an extra CA$36.87 over my original booking price, making the reservation a total of CA$88.04 or US$64.66).
This was my very first Hertz rental in over 5 years. I usually go with Alamo, Enterprise, National, Dollar, Thrifty, and have NEVER had a final charge post significantly higher than the quoted total at time of booking (and I’ve never had any issues with those companies either in terms of their cars or customer service, either). I don’t know if this issue is commonplace with Hertz where you get a bunch of extra undisclosed taxes and fees added after your rental has been completed. If it is, I will for sure never book with Hertz again, even if I have Shpresident’s Schmircle Shtatus with them.
In the grand scheme of things, paying nearly $30 extra is not breaking the wallet, but…if I had known that this would happen, I wouldn’t have minded saving that $30, thank you very much. Or if I had received significantly more amazing amenities or service for my extra $30, that would be fine too. But instead, I am experiencing quite the opposite.
Anyone want to bet whether my 1000 bonus UA miles will post without intervention or not? 😛 (I think it will…)
2016 Status Roundup: What I’ve Earned, and What I’ve Learned
At the beginning of the year, I did a reflection on 2015 and made some projections about what statuses I had earned, whether they’d be useful, and if I’d aim to re-qualify for them by the end of the year:
Elite Status Roundup: What I’ve earned, and what I’ve learned
Which of my predictions reached fruition?
Alaska is already matching Virgin America status
As you all know, the Alaska Airlines / Virgin America merger was finally approved recently. Alaska is taking more steps to merge the two airlines, and part of that process is a merger of the two frequent flier programs.
Many people got the following email stating that their Virgin America Elevate accounts and Mileage Plan accounts would be merged on January 9.
Dear Michael,
We have some exciting news about Virgin America’s integration with Alaska Airlines. Starting today, Elevate members can now earn points when flying on Alaska Airlines.
On January 9, Elevate members will be receiving a Mileage PlanTM number, but based on our records, you’re already enjoying the benefits of Alaska’s award-winning Mileage Plan. If we got it right, there’s no need to contact us. But, if either of these account numbers are wrong, please let us know by December 26, so we can update our records accordingly, and assign you a Mileage Plan number if needed.
Elevate: ************
Mileage Plan: **********
Even We Make Mistakes Sometimes…
Hello from Queenstown, where you get to wake up to this every morning:
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies getting here due to a snafu we had at the airport with our checked bags. To put it simply, we ended up shelling out $120/bag per person as the result of a series of mistakes we made.
Let’s start at the beginning. We purchased our tickets through Amex Travel, and we bought them for a Virgin Australia codeshare operated by Air New Zealand. At the time of ticketing, there was a notation saying that checked baggage fees were not charged at the time of booking, but as far as I’ve seen it says that for all tickets, and since it was an international flight, we assumed that a baggage allowance was included in a ticket. Furthermore, Michael has Star Alliance Gold status through a status match to Copa Airlines, which theoretically entitles him to an extra checked bag. So we were doubly good, right?
When we went to access our booking online (a month out, a week out, and a day out), we found that we couldn’t actually do so. We assumed that this was the result of it being a codeshare, so again, we resolved to sort it out at the airport.
That should have set off a red flag or at least convinced us that it might be worth calling Air New Zealand to get everything squared away. Whats more, Air New Zealand is a pretty reputable (read: non-low cost carrier like Spirit or RyanAir) airline, so it was probably fair to expect the same treatment as we’d get with a U.S. domestic carrier.
It was therefore much to our dismay when we were paying for our bags and told that we owed a whopping $360 dollars (I managed to drop enough weight from my bag for it to be considered a carry-on) for our three bags. Not only were bags $120/piece, but also the representative claimed that Michael’s status granted him nothing in the case of a seat-only fare.
What the hell?
Sure enough, here are the terms from Air New Zealand’s website:
I tried pretty much every trick in the book, saying that we wouldn’t have checked a third bag if we had known Michael wouldn’t get his benefit (which the representative called by basically threatening to go retrieve the bag after it had already been shipped off) as well as checking the price of a normal fare (had it been less than $240, it would actually have been cheaper for Michael to buy a new ticket and take two bags). Moreover, as if to rub it in our face, the rep told us that it would have been only $55 to buy the bags online (as it turns out, she’s wrong about this — we would have had to first upgrade to a normal fare from a seat-only fare and then purchased the bags).
Frustrated, but without other options, we forked over the money. But as annoying as it was, we didn’t dwell on it. After all, we’re in one of the most beautiful parts of the world that any of us have ever been to, and we’re all together.
In sum, be careful when booking through third parties, especially with foreign carriers and particularly now that United and Delta are/have rolled out equivalent no-frills fares, but don’t beat yourself up over it if you miss something. Because even we make mistakes sometimes…
Happy travels!
Orbitz Makes My Head Spin
I’m about as close to an Orbitz fanboy as you can find on the internet. I even signed up for the Orbitz rewards credit card, and I continue to book with them even after they eviscerated their best price guarantee program. That’s why I was supremely annoyed to find this in my inbox as I was sitting down to enjoy a burger at my friend Grant’s ‘meat’-up this afternoon:
For context, AA has been running some $100.60 round trip fares to Dallas from San Francisco. After all the rewards I can get, it ends up costing me about $93 for each round trip, so I decided to book two back-to-back for next week to start padding my Alaska mileage account and re-qualify for elite status for 2017.
Wait. Did I just say I’m taking a mileage run?
Yes, I did. I’ll give you the math really quickly and get on with my story, but after all is said and done, each round trip earns me redeemable miles at about 1.6 cents per mile and elite qualifying miles at 3.2 cents per mile. I’ll happily buy Alaska miles at that price, and I thought the experience itself would be fun (i.e. worth my time) since I can work from the plane as long as I have internet.
Anyway, on with my story.
THEY CANCELLED THE FIRST LEG WITHOUT TELLING ME!!
Needless to say I was livid and not looking forward to doing battle on the phone (and sitting on hold for an hour), especially because I think it’s impossible to actually get what you want if you’re dispassionate (so I’d have to ‘work myself up’). I considered having GoButler do it (and they were more than willing), but this needed a special touch.
After speaking to the front-line rep, who countered that they had notified me by phone (3 minutes before the cancellation email, having left no voicemail; I sure as hell wasn’t picking up a call from a random number in Chicago) before canceling and that the best he could do was book at the new, higher price of $150.60 and then offer me a ‘voucher’ for $50.
“That’s unacceptable.”
“Okay. I’ll get a supervisor.”
And then the wait. 30 minutes. 40 minutes. At minute 51 of my phone call, I finally got to speak to a supervisor, who said she needed to speak to the ticketing department to investigate why the ticket had gotten cancelled.
While she waited, I stated my case. I didn’t pull a DYKWIA to the letter, but stated that I was a loyal customer who spends thousands of dollars a year at Orbitz (which is true; I spent thousands of dollars LAST year, almost all of which were earned from best price guarantee claims 😉 ) and hoped she understood my frustration since the flights were so clearly distinct. Then I told her that the only outcome I’d accept was having my original ticket reinstated and receiving another 100 Orbucks on top as a courtesy.
“I’m sorry, but I need to speak to the ticketing department.”
To be clear, I knew both of these conditions were ridiculous (the first impossible; they can’t ‘reinstate’ a ticket), but I did it to anchor her and make myself appear reasonable with my next proposal: that they ticket the flight at the new price, issue a refund for the difference, and give me 50 Orbucks for my trouble.
That worked. And I suspect it did for two reasons. First, the anchoring. I asked for something I knew was impossible and as a result, appeared to be making a concession when I asked for what I really wanted. Second was more subtle but hopefully a good takeaway if you ever find yourself in a similar situation: the mechanism I specified is a process that I know they have because it’s exactly how their best rate guarantee works. I didn’t specifically say that, but getting her thinking along those lines definitely got the ball rolling.
Thankfully, this turned out well enough (and since this was a mileage run anyway the downside of not taking the flight was very low), but it was an extraordinarily unpleasant experience. Any other Orbitz horror stories out there? What about other OTAs?