For several years, we were planning this big vacation for this year. We would be visiting several European countries over the course of three weeks. Lots of time and efforts was put into the planning and coordinating with friends we would be seeing along the way. Enter 2020 and the pandemic, and we cancelled everything.
That left us with many refunds / credits to pursue. The airlines tickets were amazingly easy, we cancelled, and miles were returned to our account within days. We have a credit for future travel – easy. Hotels were all booked without a deposit – so that made cancellations easy. Excursions were fairly easy to cancel, although we have credits for one to use in the near future (I hope).
Now on to the hard part. We chose to cancel our cruise before the cruise line cancelled the cruise. We did it before final payment, as we did not want to have our money tied up. Now, we needed to get back our deposit plus some extra charges. We cancelled our cruise more than 90 days in advance, so all was refundable. We understood that refunds were taking quite a while and were patient. The credits started to come in and various amounts. No amount refunded was equal to the charges. So, we totaled up what was owed and started to subtract the refunds, but not all the money was returned. (Thanks to meticulous record keeping, we knew what was owed to us and how it was paid for).
Why is this important? Because when all was done, we were not made whole. We were shorted some of our money paid. We ended up filing a dispute with our credit card company. When you use a credit card for payment you have the added benefit for protection. We were able to provide all the details, original charge information and all the calls / emails to rectify the situation. This is important for your dispute case. Then just this past week, the dispute was resolved by our credit card company and we are all set, and we were made whole.
When you find yourself at your wits end and frustrated, know that your credit card company can help you resolve the situation. Remember this only works if you use a credit card for payment.
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