How To Change Or Cancel A LifeMiles Award Ticket

From personal experience, they don’t let you cancel (international) award tickets if your takeoff/departure is in 24 hours. Also, you can only change/cancel 24 hours after flight takeoff/departure. Rest assured, you’ll get your miles back. It’s one of my favorite FF programs.

It's so funny you wrote this today. Called lifemiles yesterday to cancel 3 different tickets. Service was amazing, cancellation fees were waived because of flight schedule changes. She did say up to 7-10 business days for points to be back in your account. The agent also split my reservation in two so I could cancel one passenger. Nothing unusual there, but sometimes I've had issues with lifemiles but this time it was perfectly smooth!

Had to call Lifemiles customer service for help on a ticket that was erroring out when trying to book it. Agent was friendly and we had the issue fixed in 25 minutes. A little long but relatively painless.

The cancel fee for short haul flights really depend on the flight length (even though I don’t know the exactly the rule).
Last week, I cancelled a Lifemiles ticket for a flight between Santa Marta and Cartagena (Colombia) and the cancel fee was $30 (shame on you Aeroplan for not having variable cancel fees depending on flight length).
I’ve also cancelled a Lifemiles ticket for a domestic flight in Brazil (flying Gol) about a year ago and the cancel fee was also $30.

Call center tip: If by any chance you speak Portuguese, select that option when calling Lifemiles and almost all the time you’ll be assisted right away (no wait).
The agents that speak Portuguese also speak Spanish, so you can also use that tip to speak to someone in Spanish.

This is really helpful, thank you.

Can you please do something like this for Aeroplan (or point us there if you already have)?

Thanks!

FYI: Usually canceling a LifeMiles flight is moderately easy. You need an article about what to do when you have booked a LifeMiles award flight and then receive a cancellation notice 3 hours later due to "potential" fraud. I called to LifeMiles and they insisted that there was no cancellation of my ticket and sent me a copy of the eticket. However, when I went to check-in, the Avianca website stated that I would have to check-in at the airport. (Red flag) I called again, and sure enough the clerk said the ticket was canceled and my LifeMiles account was blocked. We bought a ticket with my wife's separate LifeMiles account and different credit card but same results. We were forced to buy tickets and it took 3 weeks to have our accounts unlocked after numerous emails. This is about the 3rd time this happened in a five year period. Complaining does no good as the LifeMiles management doesn't care as they want you to buy LifeMiles but not to use them.

Please note that even if the cancellation is initiated by Avianca, they will NOT refund the $25 booking fee. I tried everything, Avianca said it is LifeMiles who should refund it, LifeMiles said it is Avianca's job. I messaged them, called them, zero effect.

You don't mention their 24 hr cancel policy. They can void tickets same calendar day, and if it's next day but within 24 hours they can open a case number and it will get refunded fully in about a week (except the $25 booking fee).

I've cancelled many LM bookings but have never gotten the email request for payment. Is that a very new thing?

Last week I cancelled a Lifemiles issued ticket and it was exactly the way Ben mentioned.
It didn’t use to be like that though.
The agent that assisted me tried to do the old process first (the one you typed your credit card info on the phone) and it didn’t work. No charge attempted on my credit card and no miles being refunded right away as it used to happen before.
That’s when she contacted a different department and they issued the email that requested my credit card info.
My credit card was charged right after I filled out and sent the form back and the miles only reappeared in my account 24 hours later.

Dispute the charge on your credit card.

Wow, that level of service is new (to me, anyway). Last time I booked a LM award ticket, when the website errored out you had to email them to get the ticket booked, which would happen within 72 hours (or something like that - it was very much not immediate). This was 6 or 7 years ago, and their website was incredibly buggy, with successful redemptions being more the exception than the rule. It was so nerve-wracking that I decided not to make any more LM bookings. But if both of those issues have been fixed (buggy website and long wait to fix online booking problems), then LM is definitely worth looking at again.

Thank you. I was thinking about that but thought since it is a "booking fee", they could argue that it was a valid charge since I did book the flights (even though Avianca later cancelled it). Will see.

I had a card replaced with a different number and they kept telling me the card I used for the booking was not valid so they couldn't refund the miles. I ended up disputing it with my CC and they refunded it right away. 10 months later out of the blue I get email from lifemiles giving me gift card with the taxes/fee on it but can only use it for Avianca flights.

I really hate (dread) booking a LM award for many of the reasons mentioned here. Everything goes great, until it doesn't.
It seems that no matter which contact number you dial, you end up with an agent in San Salvador, Bogota etc. Some agents have a very inflated opinion as to their fluency in English it seems, which can make the conversation very difficult. Sometimes I have thought HUCA might be the sensible option.
Last cancellation I requested could not be processed as it was within 3-4 days of departure. (Just another example of LifeMiles bizzarroland.) So in effect, you become a no-show for that flight, and sort it out later? Yes, she said.
I did not feel reassured in the least, but in the end it worked out, and miles, fees & taxes (less $200) refunded in due course.

Is the US number 24x7 or 9am-7pm ?
I’m over in India, with the time difference it’s 6am in Bogotá but no response on the helpline. Tried the Germany number as well but no luck.
Appreciate some guidance from the regular Lifemiles users who don’t happen to be in the US. Thanks much !

Question:
If I have 4 itineraries under the same reservation how much would I have to pay in case of cancellation - $200 or $800 ($200x4)? Do they handle it as a single booking in terms of fees or each pax will be billed its' own cancellation fee?
Thanks!

I just called 5mins ago to cancel my ticket, their phone menu has changed,
1. no more step 2 input lifemile membership #
2. So I just go ahead and pressed 3 for 'Lifemiles information', then pressed 2 for 'check lifemiles balance' (yes, 2, not 3 'check transactions', 3 was not working at all for some reason, it will repeat itself 2 times and hangup)
3. Once I pressed 2, I was transferred to an live agent imminently and he was able to submit the case to cancel my ticket (as I just booked my ticket this morning)

Hallo Ben, mir wäre schon geholfen, wenn ich herausfinden kann, wo ich die Ticketnummer des Prämientickets auf der Lifemilesseite meiner Buchungen finde. Die PNR finde ich. Mit der PNR komme ich bei der ausführenden Airline nicht weiter.
Vielen Dank

Hi Ben
hopefully I can get some advise from you.

My wife booked my ticket from LAX-TPE-HND-ICN-LAX using my MIDDLE & LAST NAME instead of FIRST MIDDLE & LAST. Lifemiles told me I have to cancel and rebook but I'll be flying out on Oct 10. I don't see the same flights on Lifemiles but I was able to find them on Google.
Worst case scenario, cancel and rebook, am I able to get the same flights/seats immediately? I have 135k miles available in case it require more miles.
I saw other posts about flying domestic and internationally with MIDDLE &LAST only. Do you think or have you heard that it will work?

Greatly appreciate your reply.

Today, they refused to cancel an international award ticket due to being within 7 days of departure.
I need to call after the departure date and pay $200 to get the miles/taxes back.

FYI I found this via google and their tel# has changed. The audio in the old message is solely in spanish. the new tel# is 866-919-0081

their website still has the old number on it.

This was the number the recording shared in Spanish as well. I also used this number and then the rest of the process was the same.

I been looking at arranging travel to FRankfurt from Detroit, I can’t seem to see business class tickets available..
Am I doing something wrong? If I do economy can I upgrade to business class through Lufthansa on these tickets?

I been looking at arranging travel to FRankfurt from Detroit, I can’t seem to see business class tickets available..
Am I doing something wrong? If I do economy can I upgrade to business class through Lufthansa on these tickets?

I second that. Booked a United ticket through LM. United cancelled the booking and I had to fly another way. LM would not refund the 25 booking fee. Spoke to 3 diff reps. Shouldn’t be the case for involuntary cancellations. I will be filing a DOT complaint about it.

I second that. Booked a United ticket through LM. United cancelled the booking and I had to fly another way. LM would not refund the 25 booking fee. Spoke to 3 diff reps. Shouldn’t be the case for involuntary cancellations. I will be filing a DOT complaint about it more for the principle.

Ben - it would be helpful to update this article with the correct phone number and IVR selections.

I thought I'd post an update that you can now get a refund via their website. And believe it or not, it's relatively straightforward.

I'm not sure how long this has been available, but it's a welcome change.

Go to https://www.lifemiles.com/fly/find and select Refund with Miles.

The miles are redeposited in your account within minutes and the "airport taxes" will be credited to the original form of payment. Note that you don't get the full amount back that you paid - mine was less the $50 "Star Alliance booking fee", and you still pay their per ticket cancellation fee.