Nonrefundable-Time for a thread?

It has amazed me how travelers do not seem to understand what it means after they booked non-refundable and gained a discount.

I think people do understand what non refundable means and that they thought they understood the risks when purchasing. Then, suddenly, here is this new risk that no one really considered before. It is an exception to the previous risk assessment and naturally they hope it will cause an exception to the non refundable policy.

I understand the natural desire not to lose money on this. I don’t blame people for checking to see if a refund might be possible. It only seems a little odd when they start blaming others when told “no.”

Suki and Carol thank you. I just want to grab folks by the collar sometimes- and ask do you really know your risk. I just see too much unhappiness at times due to poor decision making. As well as working with 1 client right now who has hired too many princesses lately (male and female variety) and just won’t cut this losses. Quite frustrating.

We just lost 1 thread today in the Italy forum as the woman was not getting the sympathy she felt entitled to when the outrageously mean RS recommended hotel would not let her out of her nonrefundable room and return money to her.

While I tend to agree with your post, I still think the airlines are gouging people with their change fees. When I book a non-refundable tickets, I don't expect to get my money back if plans change. However, I don't expect to be gouged if I have to make an itinerary change due to the virus.

We just lost 1 thread today in the Italy forum as the woman was not getting the sympathy she felt entitled to

And that is why I think it is not a good idea that this forum allows a poster to delete a whole thread. It lets them delete other people's posts, which were possibly written for the benefit of any reader, not just the original poster.

"Non-refundable" means Non-refundable, I too have had to eat lost paid for bookings. That's the way it works.

It took me two experiences to realize that however sure you are of your plans, the unimaginable can happen. The first time, my husband forgot his passport. Since we were to fly not from home, but out of Dulles after attending a wedding, it was not a simple matter of getting the pp from our house. Our son-in-law had to get back home to San Francisco, retrieve the pp, and Fedex it to us. We lost all three prepaid nights in Madrid.
The second time, I made the mistake of adding 14 (number of tour days) to the start date (e.g.15) to get the date I should book for our return flight, forgetting that tours count your departure date in the day count. Shame on me, a retired math teacher! The cost for another hotel night, $225, was less than that for changing two tickets, $250x2, so we spent an extra night in Casablanca.
No matter how tempted I am, I now resolutely resist the lure of non-refundable hotel prices. Air fares are different. When I was recently checking fares, refundable ones were up to $1000 more than the not for the 2 of us. In that case, I go for the changeable, but not refundable. As they say, “do the math;” and don’t whine if the “unimaginable” happens.

I traveled happily for 8 years saving money with non-refundable rooms until I had a health scare that required surprise major abdominal surgery 75 days before a 2 week solo trip to Europe...I recovered easily and went on my trip with no problems but after that I knew I had to start booking slightly more costly refundable accommodations. Flight changes I could deal with but not losing a huge chunk on my rooms.

I have four non-refundable nights in a Dubai hotel starting tomorrow night, hundreds out the window.
And several thousand more on the line with a refundable Emirates ticket, totally at the mercy of their squirrelly airline math. Costly virus.

But I'm capable of screwing up royally on my own. Last summer, I paid for August but needed a hotel room in July. Oops. Non- refundable.
Stuff happens. Got to move on.

Edit: Wednesday now. We were supposed to leave for Singapore today. Sad face icon.

Most of what we lost in canceling our trip to Italy this month was the non-refundable seat selection fees on our British Airways flights. (The tickets themselves were booked with miles and refundable with a small fee). They charge a hefty amount for business class seats on the 747 upper deck, but it is worth it to us. Not a chance of getting those back. I knew this when I booked, and cannot complain.

Two hotels I booked at a non-refundable rate. The one in Naples offered a credit for a future stay. The one in London, where I am a loyalty program member and have stayed 5 times previously, declined to budge. (Ironically, they previously allowed me to make a last-minute date change on a non-refundable rate by paying the difference between that and the regular rate. I offered to do that and the answer was still “no”.

Train tickets: Trenitalia says they will offer a voucher for future travel for one of our journeys, from Milan to Naples. The trains around southern Italy (between Naples and Matera) are not eligible, unless they change their policy. But the amount is small and just worth a shrug.

London play tickets: around $400 invested here that cannot be recovered; there is no basis for asking for reconsideration because public events have not been restricted in London.

I booked these non-refundable tickets with every intent of using them, but also the realization that “things happen”. This is the first trip we have taken in a long time without any travel insurance other than medical coverage; I did that because we had so little invested in non-refundable payments. And it turns out that even trip cancellation insurance would not have covered this situation, because epidemics and pandemics are excluded. So I can balance what I saved in the cost of trip insurance against our actual losses.

Makes me feel a bit better. 🍷

Yes, non-refundable means non-refundable, but there have been a few changes in the industry over the past 25 years that might merit a little more flexibility or "souplesse" as we would say in French. (I can't think of an English word that captures it completely.)

I fly almost entirely on paid premium economy and business (international) or first (domestic) tickets, and can afford to do so. The rules for many of these fares make the difference between the economy and premium economy fares, or between the economy and first class fares, refundable. This is the case with Lufthansa, for example. It's a great benefit when there's an emergency and it's necessary to board the next flight home, regardless of class.

Refundable economy fares, however, have become outrageously expensive. A refundable economy ticket costs more than an advance-purchase first class ticket (which may include a refundable portion, as explained above). You're looking at three to five times the cost of regular economy (not basic economy) ticket!

Refundable economy tickets can also be hard to purchase. Lufthansa just last fall added the ability to select a fare other than the lowest fare in a given class, on its Web site and app.

Change fees didn't exist until the mid-1990s, and they started out small, at USD 25, i.e., a fraction of the value of the ticket. Today, change fees of USD 300, 400 or 500 per person per leg are common.

Under these pricing conditions, which the airlines created themselves, the airlines should be flexible when there is a pandemic. A credit memo for a future trip seems quite reasonable. If it were my airline, I'd be thankful for the promise of future business. There might well be a permanent shift toward online meetings, and an attendant drop in business travel. Airlines might be grateful for those economy-class travelers in a year or two.

There would even be a business argument for granting refunds: honest accounting forbids counting the money as regular revenue if the service isn't actually consumed. It gets reported as fee revenue rather than ticket revenue. In other words, investors notice that the basic business is declining.

I do encourage people to buy travel insurance with a "cancel any reason" add-on. Early in the present outbreak, multiple travel insurers removed the option. It's not available at any price.

I am a big supporter of "unbundling", i.e., of paying for the services you use. I don't check bags and so I don't have to pay for that. I like shorter lines and more space, so I do pay for that. But for all-economy travelers, flexible air tickets have become less and less readily available over the past 25 years.

Airlines are in business to make money. In an unprecedented (in modern times) crisis like this, it's possible that flexibility will be the way to maximize long-term income.

Not all of us can afford to buy refundable tickets. Our travel insurance will not cover for this situation. We've most likely lost all our tickets for our June trip. It seems quite unlikely that we will be able to go. It's fine to suggest buying refundable tickets, but I'm sure that most of us cannot afford to do so.

Like many, I am now in the midst of making cancellations. I had a March 25th trip planned for Portugal. I haven’t figured out what is going to happen to the airline tickets (who can get through?). I did receive a very kind email from the hotel saying they were allowing me to cancel without penalty. I followed my advice of “ask for, but don’t expect a refund.” It was a nice surprise to be let off the hook for the hotel.

It never hurts to ask.

As I reported above, my London hotel (Indigo Paddington) declined to issue either a refund or a credit for future stay for our March 24 visit. As we have stayed there before, and I am a member of their group loyalty program (IHG Hotels) I expected some degree of flexibility, but no joy. So when the CEO of the IHG group sent an email on March 11 stating that they were responding to the coronavirus crisis by allowing free cancellation of reservations for stays through March, I asked the hotel to reconsider. They said they could offer a credit toward a stay within the next three months, period.

So I called Member Services for the loyalty program and my request for cancellation and refund was granted without any hesitation. I received the confirmation email while I was still on the phone.

And as of today, Italo extended the time eligible for refunds (actually credit, not money back) up to April 3, so I have applied for that.

And our southern Italy train travel, Naples to Matera and back, which was earlier ineligible, was immediately refunded yesterday by Trainline with a simple click on the “cancel” button in My Bookings. Credit appeared in my account today.