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Should I Cancel Our Tour For August?

artnbarb

1000+ Posts
I'm 99% sure we will NOT be flying to Ireland and NOT be taking the 8 day tour we had booked. We have up until mid-June to cancel, and with all the phone lines being overwhelmed, I've not yet officially cancelled our fight from IAD to Dublin, but I didn't see any advantage to cancelling earlier rather than later - they're still just going to issue me a credit for a future flight.

BUT - I also have NOT canceled the 3 night Dublin hotel, or the 8 day tour itself, or the Dublin airport hotel. I'm thinking no maybe I'm giving those people false hope - but surely we must all realize that we won't be traveling 'as usual' for the rest of 2020 - or am I over-reacting? I think I need to go ahead and cancel everything now. It'll hurt less to get it all canceled, then put everything on hold until 2021. I'm exhausted and the furthest I've traveled is to the grocery!
 
I'm exhausted and the furthest I've traveled is to the grocery!

I am not even doing that, but may have to soon because online ordering from UK supermarkets no longer functions.

We have a 3 week booking for Switzerland, our usual place, and are hoping we can still do that because we drive there, but you are probably right that we aren’t doing anything this year. If it were me I would wait a bit to cancel. Maybe things will improve.
 
I think we're in denial. But I'll wait a few weeks. Maybe an Easter miracle will occur.

I think that many, if not all of us, are in denial. It will take many more months in order to start to have comprehensive answers to basic medical questions concerning the virus. This will only come after massive testing, including serological testing, will be available, and no one knows exactly when this will be. It is at least a year until we see a vaccine. Only after all these are dealt with, the world will be able - hopefully - to start coping with this like it does with the flu.

The only question anybody should be asking themselves right now is : can I afford to be infected? If the answer to this is "no", then they should exercise extreme caution for many more months.
An Easter miracle might occur next year.
 
At least for the airline flight--if I remember this correctly being on United--if the airline cancels the flight, you can get your money back after a year, if you don't use the funds for flying. If you cancel first, under the rules currently posted, and if they stand for that travel date, you can only use the funds for travel with them within a year of booking. I'm kind of dealing with that for a domestic trip: I cancelled last weekend and have the funds for future United travel, and yesterday the airline cancelled the flight, so maybe the funds would have wound up being converted to Chase points after a year...but I'm not worrying about it for now.
 
At least for the airline flight--if I remember this correctly being on United--if the airline cancels the flight, you can get your money back after a year, if you don't use the funds for flying. If you cancel first, under the rules currently posted, and if they stand for that travel date, you can only use the funds for travel with them within a year of booking. I'm kind of dealing with that for a domestic trip: I cancelled last weekend and have the funds for future United travel, and yesterday the airline cancelled the flight, so maybe the funds would have wound up being converted to Chase points after a year...but I'm not worrying about it for now.
So if I booked a United flight to Rome on Feb. 12 for a September flight, and I cancelled, I would only have til Feb.12, 2021 to use it.
 
First, you'd need to wait for United to post a waiver that covers September; for now, they're only covering travel booked through May 31. The waiver showing here says (as I read it) that, in your case, you'd need to make the booking by Dec. 31, 2020 (earlier than a year after the booking) for travel to start by Feb. 12. If a waiver is still in effect for September travel, the rules may be different.

If there's no waiver in effect and you have a typical reduced-fare ticket, the change fees might take so much of the fare that you'd need to consider throwing the ticket away and starting from scratch in searching for a new fare for when travel starts to pick up again.
 
First, you'd need to wait for United to post a waiver that covers September; for now, they're only covering travel booked through May 31. The waiver showing here says (as I read it) that, in your case, you'd need to make the booking by Dec. 31, 2020 (earlier than a year after the booking) for travel to start by Feb. 12. If a waiver is still in effect for September travel, the rules may be different.

If there's no waiver in effect and you have a typical reduced-fare ticket, the change fees might take so much of the fare that you'd need to consider throwing the ticket away and starting from scratch in searching for a new fare for when travel starts to pick up again.
I think there is a waiver in effect if you booked before the whole virus effect. Initially, it was just those people who booked between March 2 and 31st, but like me, enough people who booked before that must have complained, and they included us. But now you’ve made me aware that I should check their website again.
 
Here’s what I got from United:
  • For wholly rescheduled travel departing after June 30, 2020, or for a change in departure or destination city, the change fee will be waived, but a difference in fare may apply. Rescheduled travel must be completed within one year from the date when the ticket was issued.
  • View your reservation and select Change Flight to search for alternate flights.
  • ORIGINAL TICKET MUST HAVE BEEN PURCHASED BY:
  • February 26, 2020
  • We booked on February 12.
So i’m figuring that we have to either fly to Rome on different dates and before Feb.12, 2021, or change destination city.
 
Without addressing anyone’s specific situation, I have discovered that in the case both of my SAS and prepaid Hilton Honors reservations, my options were much more advantageous by waiting for the airline to cancel and for Hilton Honors to offer full refund than would have been the case had I cancelled or rebooked earlier.
 
Pati, American has basically the same policy. We booked our ticket to South Africa in Oct. 2019. If we had cancelled (fortunately the airline cancelled the flight) we would have had to fly by the date we bought the ticket last Oct. So that only would have given us 7 months.
 

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