NYT TRAVEL: Help! A Check-in Agent’s Mistake Made Me Miss an Antarctic Cruise and I’m Out $17,000.
By Seth Kugel
Section: Travel
Source: New York Times
Published Date: January 6, 2023 at 02:00AM
I was set to take what for me was the “trip of a lifetime,” a $17,000 Antarctic cruise with Australia-based Aurora Expeditions. But when I tried to check in for my flight from Nashville to Santiago, Chile (via Miami), the check-in agent insisted that entering Chile required two forms I had never heard of, even though I had researched the requirements carefully. I missed my flight, and the cruise. When I complained, American Airlines quickly refunded the (nonrefundable) flight, but Aurora would not give me credit for a future cruise and my travel insurer, Trip Mate, denied my claim. I’d like American to acknowledge in writing that they made a mistake and use that to ask Aurora to reconsider and to file an appeal to Trip Mate. Can you help? Deborah, Franklin, Tenn.
Dear Deborah,
I have good news for you: American will reimburse you for the total cost of your cruise.
I have bad news for everyone else: Getting you reimbursed for the airline’s obvious incompetence was such a maddening process, even for me, that I have very little hope for average consumers who suffer equally absurd wrongs in the future.
For starters, Trip Mate and Aurora could have been more understanding or even — though this is a stretch — humane. In an ideal world, American would have immediately recognized its error in writing, Trip Mate would have approved your claim for at least a portion of the cruise’s cost, and Aurora would have made up for another chunk with a sharp discount on a future cruise.
This is especially true given how responsible and persistent you were before, during and after your debacle.
You researched requirements for entering Chile on Sherpa, a free website that helps with travel documentation, determining correctly that a valid passport and a proof of Covid-19 vaccination were enough. When you were told differently at the airport, you pleaded your case, asked for (and were denied) an explanation in writing, returned to the airport later to seek such explanation, and wrote what you described to me as more than 25 emails to American, asking for a written statement to support your insurance claim and your request to Aurora for credit.
How could the original error have happened? My best guess is that the American agent confused the requirements to enter Chile as a whole to the much stricter documentation needed to visit the country’s isolated Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island). And then he stuck to his guns. So did American customer service: The responses they sent were unfailingly polite and entirely unhelpful. In one nonsensical email you forwarded, an American representative appeared to be plugging in random boilerplate language. “While I am glad that we were still able to accommodate you,” he wrote, “I realize that it was not the flight of your choice.”
Even so, you correctly filed a claim with Trip Mate. “The reason provided for your claim is not covered under the trip cancellation provisions,” they told you in a denial email. You also asked Aurora for credit, but they said you needed to cancel 90 days in advance, not one.
I would be remiss not to point out your one mistake: You booked a multi-leg, international flight that was to arrive less than 24 hours before your very expensive trip was to begin, a risky plan. But just because someone walks perilously close to the edge of a cliff does not absolve the person (or airline) that pushes them over.
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By Seth Kugel
Section: Travel
Source: New York Times
Published Date: January 6, 2023 at 02:00AM
An American Airlines error kept a traveler from getting to her cruise’s departure, but the carrier wouldn’t take financial responsibility and her trip insurance refused to pay. Then our columnist stepped in.
Dear Tripped Up,I was set to take what for me was the “trip of a lifetime,” a $17,000 Antarctic cruise with Australia-based Aurora Expeditions. But when I tried to check in for my flight from Nashville to Santiago, Chile (via Miami), the check-in agent insisted that entering Chile required two forms I had never heard of, even though I had researched the requirements carefully. I missed my flight, and the cruise. When I complained, American Airlines quickly refunded the (nonrefundable) flight, but Aurora would not give me credit for a future cruise and my travel insurer, Trip Mate, denied my claim. I’d like American to acknowledge in writing that they made a mistake and use that to ask Aurora to reconsider and to file an appeal to Trip Mate. Can you help? Deborah, Franklin, Tenn.
Dear Deborah,
I have good news for you: American will reimburse you for the total cost of your cruise.
I have bad news for everyone else: Getting you reimbursed for the airline’s obvious incompetence was such a maddening process, even for me, that I have very little hope for average consumers who suffer equally absurd wrongs in the future.
For starters, Trip Mate and Aurora could have been more understanding or even — though this is a stretch — humane. In an ideal world, American would have immediately recognized its error in writing, Trip Mate would have approved your claim for at least a portion of the cruise’s cost, and Aurora would have made up for another chunk with a sharp discount on a future cruise.
This is especially true given how responsible and persistent you were before, during and after your debacle.
You researched requirements for entering Chile on Sherpa, a free website that helps with travel documentation, determining correctly that a valid passport and a proof of Covid-19 vaccination were enough. When you were told differently at the airport, you pleaded your case, asked for (and were denied) an explanation in writing, returned to the airport later to seek such explanation, and wrote what you described to me as more than 25 emails to American, asking for a written statement to support your insurance claim and your request to Aurora for credit.
How could the original error have happened? My best guess is that the American agent confused the requirements to enter Chile as a whole to the much stricter documentation needed to visit the country’s isolated Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island). And then he stuck to his guns. So did American customer service: The responses they sent were unfailingly polite and entirely unhelpful. In one nonsensical email you forwarded, an American representative appeared to be plugging in random boilerplate language. “While I am glad that we were still able to accommodate you,” he wrote, “I realize that it was not the flight of your choice.”
Even so, you correctly filed a claim with Trip Mate. “The reason provided for your claim is not covered under the trip cancellation provisions,” they told you in a denial email. You also asked Aurora for credit, but they said you needed to cancel 90 days in advance, not one.
I would be remiss not to point out your one mistake: You booked a multi-leg, international flight that was to arrive less than 24 hours before your very expensive trip was to begin, a risky plan. But just because someone walks perilously close to the edge of a cliff does not absolve the person (or airline) that pushes them over.
Read More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/travel/tripped-up-missed-cruise.html
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