It's the end of February and I guess my New Year's resolution is already broken. I haven't put up a real post in forever. Hahaha. But I still have been finding the time to travel though! Last month I was able to go to Las Vegas on a round trip ticket for $80! I was there for a few days and even went on a little road trip to Death Valley, CA. I must make a dedicated post about my adventures!
I had a scheduled weekend getaway setup for Valentine's Day in Boston. Alas this winter has been something out of Frozen. Frigid cold and bitter winds. As cold as it is here in NY, Boston has been utterly crushed with snowstorm after snowstorm. I tried to wait out a snowstorm that was destined to approach. I was hoping that all the weather reports were wrong and there would be no storm in Bean Town during Vday weekend.
I had to face the facts and just cancel my trip. I booked it back in December when I found out that Orbitz was having a deal. If you signed up with Visa Checkout and used it to book through Orbitz you could get $100 off hotels $100 or more. So I signed Angel and myself up so we could each get $100 off per night. You could use it on any hotel anywhere. The deal was for the first 10,000 people to use it. In the end we decided to go to Boston because it's only a few hours drive away, we didn't have to spend money on plane tickets, and it's the perfect way to grab some good clam chowder. After all discounts and taxes (on the full price) we ended up booking a weekend at The Hotel Buckminster for $50 each night.
As it turns out cancellation policies are very strict. You have 48 hours to cancel through Orbitz. I was able to get my money back in full for Saturday. I was already within the 48 hours of our trip so I called Orbitz to see if they made any exceptions for inclimate weather and get my money back for Friday. Everyone I spoke to at customer service was very nice and did seem to want to help me. They kept having me call back because they had to speak to the manager at Hotel Buckminster to see if they would refund me my money. Once Orbitz finally got a hold of the manager he refused to reimburse me. I was so livid. The hotel is in Boston they know how they are getting slammed with snow every other day and it's difficult to travel there. He didn't care. I wasn't getting my money back. I tried to ask if I could switch it to another weekend but since I used the $100 a night discounts they said I could switch it but I had to pay the difference! No thanx! I was not going to let what was supposed to be $50 a night turn into over $200 a night. In the end after going back and forth with Orbitz they said their hands were tied. They offered me a $30 voucher for further use but I don't see myself using it anytime soon.
In the travel game I guess you win some and you lose some. In this case, thankfully I didn't end up losing too much.
