Be careful with your money, Ajay! is not a phrase I have to hear often, but sometimes I wonder myself if I am doing the right thing or not, so I look to you guys for suggestions and experiences.
For an upcoming trip, I had held award tickets on Jet Airways and Air India both, thinking I would be able to take a call on which one to use as I came closer to the travel date. The whole travel plan happened on a whim, so I was not sure about how my schedule was going to evolve closer to the travel date.
One thing was for sure, I did not want to be on an early morning flight, but that was my best case scenario with Jet Airways. However, taking my own advise that I give everyone, that on award tickets you got to show a bit of flexibility, I sucked it up and booked it anyways.
Now, it seems I don’t want that ticket anymore. As a JetPrivilege Platinum Member, one of the advantages I have is the ability to cancel award tickets without any mileage deductions on my account. So, for this ticket, I will receive the entire mileage amount deducted, and the cash paid towards taxes back into my account within 3 working days.
However, I was reminded, that I can use this ticket over the next 1 year as an award ticket as well, subject to availability. How this works is that while the current travel will be cancelled, the ticket shell is retained, and at a later date, for the same passenger/s on the same routing, you can use the ticket for award travel by quoting the e-ticket number to the service centre and reserving new seats.
With me, I chose to just cancel the ticket in whole and have the miles return to my account, albeit this costed me INR 250 as the convenience fee which will not be returned to my account. Ultimately I can look the other way and claim that is what coffee costs for two people at Starbucks these days, but it would be interesting to hear how you guys would have acted in this situation.
Cancel the ticket and get your miles back (forfeit the fee!)
or
Save the ticket shell and use it another day
I’m looking forward to hearing your views…
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One of the important constraint which is generally attached is not just very limited availability but also one has to do advance booking (7 days I guess). Given this inflexibility (you may want to confirm with them), it hardly leaves anything to discussion. Get you miles back bcos if you are lucky you can book couple of hours before flight as well.
@Amit Jain that constraint does not exist on award bookings, but yes, I did take my miles back 🙂
Get miles back. Rs 250 is not that big an amount, but with 9W, earning miles is easier compared to burning miles. chances are when i want to fly on that route next time, they will not have award tickets.
@Gaurav that is what I did.
What is a Award ticket?
@Pranay a ticket with mileage redemption
I agree with others. Get your miles back. You never know the future. Jet policy can change, your status with Jet can change, you may forget about the ticket shell etc etc. Rs. 250 is a small price to pay.
Cancel the ticket and get your miles back (forfeit the fee!)
For the pain of calling the customer care and giving them history of what happened and how they could help you now. I would say Rs.250 well spent. 🙂
@Vipul I don’t bother with the history of what happened. I just tell them to cancel it and remit the miles back!
a bird in hand is worth two in the bush?
I don’t know where this idiom originated from but bird and bush don’t go well together, at least in my mind 😛
Nonetheless, I am sure the answer is, it depends, but 250 may not be much at all. I for one would get the miles back.
The other day, I booked a ticket hyd-bom few hours prior to departure using miles and I was so happy.
5000 miles instead of 16000 rupees.
And I also upgraded myself to business paying the 2000 at the counter!
Sorry, I digress!
🙂
@bluecrabs exactly what I did. I was interested in seeing if there were other thoughts 😉