Chase Ultimate Rewards Issue

[ny96]

We booked a flight to Hawaii for last April through Chase and when we had to cancel we were issued travel credit for each leg, 8 credits in all for the 4 of us. I called Chase yesterday to use the 8 credits on a one way flight and was told that I couldn’t combine the 8 credits into 4 flights and could only use 4 of the vouchers towards the flight, one per person. H was upset by this answer and tried calling too, but after spending hours on the phone got nowhere. I called American this morning and the agent said she’d happily combine the credits, but I would be charged $50 for each ticket because Chase had made the original booking. I called Chase back and after about an hour on the phone with the supervisor he said sorry, we can’t combine or call American on your behalf, but the good news is you can use 1 credit each and save the other 4 for next time. I am screaming in my head. H wants to cancel the card because he believes one of the Reserve card is excellent customer service. It’s our only card and we use it for everything. I sent them a Tweet because I couldn’t find a customer support email to send my complaint to. I booked with American and paid the fees, but I’m just so annoyed. I don’t want to say anything negative about people in call centers in other parts of the world, but it felt like I was talking to robots at Chase. What would you have done?

[daisyduck]

Did you have to add cash in addition to the credits, is that why you wanted to combine them?

That sounds very frustrating. From my experience, all types of credits/vouchers have a lot of strings attached and aren't very useful - when they come from airlines, cruises, or anyone else.

We convert all of our Chase rewards to Southwest points. It is so nice because if you cancel a flight you just get your points back and don't mess with vouchers or any of that.

[ny96]

Jun 29, 2021 18:03:37 GMT -5 daisyduck said:

Did you have to add cash in addition to the credits, is that why you wanted to combine them?

That sounds very frustrating. From my experience, all types of credits/vouchers have a lot of strings attached and aren't very useful - when they come from airlines, cruises, or anyone else.

We convert all of our Chase rewards to Southwest points. It is so nice because if you cancel a flight you just get your points back and don't mess with vouchers or any of that.

If we didn’t use both credits we would have paid about $600 out of pocket.

[goldengirlz]

We fly a lot so I probably would have just banked the $600, not pay $200 to use it. It wouldn’t have gone to waste.

But if I didn’t travel often, or didn’t want to fly American ever again, then I could see spending the money. I don’t know enough about this to know if Chase was being unreasonable or not, or if you could have escalated to a manager or something.

I agree it’s bullshit though and might consider another card, like the AmEx Platinum.

[ny96]

Jun 29, 2021 19:21:08 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

We fly a lot so I probably would have just banked the $600, not pay $200 to use it. It wouldn’t have gone to waste.

But if I didn’t travel often, or didn’t want to fly American ever again, then I could see spending the money. I don’t know enough about this to know if Chase was being unreasonable or not, or if you could have escalated to a manager or something.

I agree it’s bullshit though and might consider another card, like the AmEx Platinum.

Maybe we should have banked the extra credits. We will fly a couple more times this year. I’m mainly disappointed in their overall customer service. No one we spoke with had a clue and it really felt like we were talking to robots. This is opposed to the agents I spoke to at American who acted like people even though they couldn’t waive the fees. It makes me not want to use Chase in the future for fear of having to deal with these agents again.

[ellipses84]

That’s so frustrating! I had something similar happen with a different airline, but the credits were for me and @2 kids (who obviously don’t fly alone) and I didn’t find out I couldn’t use them all at once until I went to book a new flight. I ended up using one and was pretty irritated I couldn’t duplicate my original trip without paying extra. When Covid happened, the other two credits were going to expire before we could make another trip so I called and they were nice enough to transfer both remaining credits to my name, which gave me more flexibility to use them. If they had not done that, I’d consider taking my business elsewhere.