Back in December 2020, Alaska was letting folks convert travel credit to miles. So I had this genius idea of booking a $3.5K first class flight for 2 from Seattle to Hawaii using my CNB rewards points. After booking the trip, a few days later when I tried to cancel the flight on the Alaska site, I got an error. I then called up Alaska who said they couldn’t cancel it and I had to contact CNB, which was a bad sign. I then was forced to cancel it on the CNB side and since it was over 24 hours, I no longer could get a refund. I now had $3.5k credit good for a year on Alaska.
Fast forward to this week when I tried to use up some of that credit, I find out that I had to use up ALL of the $3.5K in ONE booking. I naively assumed I could book book multiple trips using that credit. Womp womp.
Naturally I decided to re-book a first class flight to Hawaii and luckily it was only $70 cheaper than the original $3.5K flight, so I was able to maximize the credit fully. However, I learned that CNB charges a $20 per person fee for the rebooking, which is complete bullshit but as this point whatever. So in total, it cost me $110 for this mistake and not to mention I wouldn’t have booked this first class in the first place. I would have used a companion pass and gotten the tickets for around $900.
Lesson learned – I should have booked a realistic coach flight to Hawaii in the first place. Also, don’t count on being able to cancel Alaska flights 100% when you book through one of these point portal places.
Seems like a $3540 mistake.
Immense respect for posting fails too.