Questions and Answers

Hi there, first time question. My family and I are currently on vacation in Sydney and are having a great time. Our route here was more complicated than it should have been though as the third party booking through fare depot .com apparently booked us for an illegal connection. What happened was I found a very cheap ticket/mistake fare from SeaTac to Sydney in February and bought 6 tickets. Later I called Hawaiian Air and was assigned seats and tickets. When we went to the airport to leave they told us that there wouldn’t be enough time for us to make the connection in Honolulu and cancelled that reservation, stranding us for a day in Hawaii. We were rebooked to leave Hawaii the next day on the same flight that we were originally supposed to be on.

My problem is that I paid for everything with my sapphire preferred card in February and then received a sapphire reserve card in august. Not needing both cards, I did a product change on the preferred card to a freedom card. When I went to call chase from the airport to let them know I’d be opening a trip delay claim, they told me that the card number was now a freedom card and they couldn’t initiate a claim because it did not include trip delay insurance. Not having time to pursue it at that time, I told her I’d just keep receipts and call back after our vacation.

So, do I have any options? Obviously last minute hotels for 2 adults and 4 kids in Honolulu aren’t cheap and it would be nice to be reimbursed. On the other hand, there are worse places to be stranded and we managed to enjoy the time in Hawaii.

Thanks for the advice, I’ve enjoyed reading your posts.

Brian

[USER=399]@Brian[/USER], most cards require that they be open when claims are filed. If you no longer had the CSP, then unfortunately you wouldn’t be covered by the protection it offers. Have you tried taking this up with the OTA?

I haven’t tried calling the OTA yet, still enjoying Sydney. That’s a good thought though, I won’t get locked in to just the trip delay option.

What if I call chase and try to reverse the product change? I only switched to the freedom card about 1-2 weeks ago. I forget the exact day but the card hadn’t even arrived by the time I left.

Worth a shot I suppose, can’t hurt to try.

That probably won’t work as the new card is probably waiting for you at home.

I think it’s still worth a try since Chase does not change account numbers during product changes. You could change it back to the CSP and then open a case. I have only seen language that says that you should have the product so definitely do your own research and see what you find before you do this.

I would definitely go the OTA route first. If they screwed up, they should pick up the cost of the hotel rooms.