What Happens When You Cancel A Portal Booked Flight?
We have been having a lot of conversations about using bank portals to book flights in the ToP Facebook Group. As a rule of thumb, ToP advises people not to book flights through bank travel portals. Why? Because it adds another chef to the kitchen. I know that the banks offer juicy earnings, like 5x or 10x, if you use their portals and that makes it tempting. You know why they do that? Because it makes them more money if you use them. The problem is they are not prepared to handle any irregular operations and this isn't their core business. Because of that they farm it out and the companies they have staffing their travel sector are just not great. If you thought airline call centers were bad, you haven't seen anything yet!
Having said that we realize people are going to do what they want to (including me). Especially when it comes to cards like the Capital One Venture X, which forces you to use their portal to trigger their travel credit. A crafty bunch that Capital One is! It is best to use this on a non chain hotel or car rental, assuming the prices are not inflated, which they can be. Sometimes that just won't do and you need to book a flight anyway so you go that route. Maybe that flight is on a low cost carrier like Spirit, Frontier or Allegiant. That is the booking I want to focus on here because if you run into issues with it there are some extra hoops involved. Let me share my experience with this exact thing.
My Experience With A Spirit Airlines Cancellation & Capital One Travel
I grabbed the Capital One Spark Travel Elite last year, which is now the Venture X Business. It works essentially the same as the Venture X card, credits and all. The main difference was it had a huge welcome offer less year but it required an equally massive amount of minimum spend. The offer disappeared after that until the relaunch and now it is not worth chasing in my opinion.
Since I had $300 in travel portal credit I needed to burn, and flights to Orlando I needed to book, I ended up searching some low cost carriers out of Detroit. Unfortunately Delta was too expensive, shocker, and everyone else had connections. That left me with Frontier and Spirit airlines as my only options. I was going to have to pay cash anyway so I might as well kill two birds with one stone, or so I thought.
Drastic Flight Change
They were both about the same price but Spirit's flight times worked a little better so I went that route. The total was a little over $700 roundtrip for 4 people, which is not too bad these days. I booked it, got the credit a few weeks later and moved on with life. That was until Spirit sent me a flight change email. They moved my 7PM flight to 6AM, which wasn't going to work, since my wife had to work that day.
Cancelling The Flight
I fired up the Spirit backdoor chat, since the phone hold times were forever and a day, and cancelled the flight. The rep said I should see the credit in a few days. Lucky for us, the Frontier flights had dropped over 50% from where they were a few months prior. Spirit was looking out for me after all I guess!
The problem was that the credit never came. After some time on Google I think I had figured out what happened but fired up the Spirit Airlines chat again to be sure. The agent told me the credit was issued the previous week. I asked if they could provide the last four digits of the card where the credit was sent and he did. Wouldn't you know it, they didn't match my credit card. That is because the low cost carriers like the travel portals to pay them directly for their bookings so the credit went back to Capital One's account.
Getting My Credit From Capital One
I called the number on the back of my (now) Venture X Business card, got directed to the travel department and explained what had happened. The agent pulled it all up and said they saw the credit and would now forward it to my account. The fact that it required a phone call is annoying and a horrible set up. I am sure some people lose track of things and just never do. That is travel portals for you, be prepared for a headache in all things if any issue should arise.
I should note that the $300 travel credit was never reversed and the Frontier flight was booked at the airport to save money on the flights. Take that how you would like.
What Happens When You Cancel A Portal Booked Flight: ToP Thoughts
This is a classic do as I say and not as I do scenario. Even though I knew travel portals were the absolute pits, I went ahead booking a flight anyway. I figured it was a straightforward flight I needed to pay cash for anyway, so why not. It ended up costing me an extra phone call and some of my time to get it corrected versus if I had booked directly. Be sure you calculate that possibility into your decision making process on certain cards and before booking travel via banks.
More then that though, if you book a low cost carrier through a bank / travel portal be aware that credits will not automatically come back to you. That is because they are paid for directly by the travel portal company and not by your card. It requires an extra step to get your money back should you ever have a cancellation. Be sure you stay on ToP of it so you get everything you deserve back.
