The Terminator : One woman’s struggle to cancel vacation plans at the last minute--without a travel agent or trip insurance

I generally avoid package tours. For me, half the excitement of a trip is rolling up my sleeves, reading travel books, exploring my files of collected articles, seeking out bargains and tailoring a vacation to my own tastes and pocketbook.

That can mean a whole lot of work, but it’s something I’ve always considered fun. At least until my husband and I had to cancel a 15-day trip to London and the Scottish Highlands last year after my father-in-law collapsed from heart problems two hours before our departure.

My father-in-law is fine now, but those first days were full of uncertainties. Adding to the stress was the unraveling of long-made vacation plans and the knowledge that we did not have trip insurance or more than the vaguest idea of the cancellation policies of our various hotels, airlines and car rental companies.

As organized and careful as I am on the front end, I’ve been casual about possible pitfalls. So, when I made reservations for this trip and the voices at the other end of the phone explained cancellation policies, the words didn’t even make a dent.

But I found out the hard way what happens when you have to scrub a trip at the last minute. It took several days, lots of patience and the loss of more than a few dollars to untangle us. But I learned a few things in the process.

The ambulance had taken my father-in-law to a nearby hospital, so my husband rushed out to be with his parents. I wanted to keep the phone open, but I immediately made two calls to deal with our most pressing vacation concerns: the airplane reservations and our first hotel.

At that point, we assumed we would just postpone our trip a few days. Since our air tickets were purchased with American Airlines frequent-flier points that required travel between October and May and it was April, we had only limited flexibility--they had to be used before the end of the month. (Had we bought non-refundable tickets we would have been able to apply the value of the tickets to any other tickets for a service charge.) After I explained the situation to an American supervisor, she allowed us to switch our reservations so that we could return a few days into May.

My call to the London hotel was not as positive. It was booked for the next week, so I realized then that we would have to cancel the whole trip. That meant spending the next day--and I mean whole day--with a phone on my ear because most things could not be handled with a single call.

Despite their cooperation, the calls to American Airlines were the most complicated. By Day Two, when my father-in-law was no longer in grave danger, my husband and I knew that eventually we would want a vacation. So rather than rearrange our schedules and fly to Europe, we opted for a no-brainer: a week in Maui. That, however, meant transforming two Europe tickets into two Hawaii tickets in a matter of days.

I talked with countless American customer service operators during the next five days and they were uniformly friendly and helpful. But it still wasn’t easy: Before American could issue us new tickets for Hawaii, it needed our London tickets returned to American headquarters in Dallas. That meant I had to send our tickets Federal Express (cost $13), a charge of $40 per ticket for the change in destination locations, plus a $50 fee for accelerated delivery of frequent-flier tickets. After hearing our saga, a sympathetic operator waived part of the fee.

We had used a hotel consolidator called Hotel Reservations Network to book the Chesterfield Hotel for our London lodging. As most people know, hotels normally allow cancellations up to a certain time on the day of arrival. But we had booked the Chesterfield as part of the HRN discount deal that requires prepayment of the entire hotel bill. I was understandably nervous about being able to get a refund. I called the HRN toll-free number to explain our plight and the agent quickly called the Chesterfield, which said it would refund the entire amount.

As for Scotland, I had made reservations directly with the Central Hotel in Glasgow and the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Edinburgh, using the Entertainment ’94 card, which offers 50% discounts at select hotels. Since my calls were well before our scheduled arrival and both followed normal hotel cancellation policies even with the discount, there was no problem canceling.

I worried that the same would not be true of Kildrummy Castle in the Scottish Highlands--at $184 a night, the big splurge of our trip. We had booked--and paid in advance for--one night at the famed hotel, which has a strict penalty of 50% for cancellations fewer than two weeks in advance. That deadline had come and gone before we had to scrap our trip. I had made the reservation with Travelers Advantage, a travel-agency-by-phone that offers 5% rebates, so that’s where I called. After a few days I was relieved to hear that the reservations had been canceled without penalty.

Canceling our Britrail Flexipasses, which we bought for day trips out of London and for passage to Glasgow, did not prove as easy. As with Eurail passes, Americans must buy Britrail passes before leaving the United States. I purchased ours through Travelers Advantage. Each ticket was $189 and subject to a 15% cancellation penalty. I phoned Britrail myself, hoping to persuade them to waive the 15%, but they were not particularly sympathetic. So I made the official cancellation call to Travelers Advantage.

I hoped they would have better luck, but I was wrong. Two weeks later I received a refund, less $28.35 per ticket.

As with most European car rentals, ours had been fully prepaid, through Travelers Advantage, to Town and Country International. The refund policy varies depending upon how many days in advance reservations are canceled. On the phone, Town and Country didn’t seem inclined to waive any fees, so I expected to lose as much as $30. But I included a letter from my father-in-law’s cardiologist, to verify our medical emergency. I don’t know if that’s what did it, but I was refunded the whole $190.12.

For our one-way flight between Edinburgh and London, we had booked with the small British Midland Airlines, which at $109 per person had easily beaten British Airway’s rate at the time. I had purchased these tickets through Worldview Travel, another travel-agency-by-phone that offers 5% rebates. When we had to cancel, I called my original agent, Marlene, who was just as nice as when I was booking. She promised to call British Midland and see what their policy would be.

Curious, I also called the airline and was told that I would have to pay a penalty of $50 per ticket. Marlene had much better luck. A few days later I received a receipt showing my MasterCard would be credited for $218, the full amount.

My final challenge was exchanging money: I bought British sterling American Express Travellers Checques, and wanted to return them for U.S. dollars.

I had found a fair exchange rate at American Express. But once the trip was off, I discovered that American Express doesn’t have the same rate when buying back British pounds. The net loss on $300 would have been almost $40. Somehow a 13% loss in one week didn’t seem right, so I’m still hanging onto the checks, knowing that someday we will go to Britain.

And for that next trip, how might I handle things differently? Will I buy travel insurance? Well, now I’ve looked into it.

Every travel insurance company has its own costs and packages, generally priced by trip duration. One standard Mutual of Omaha family coverage policy, for example, covers cancellation costs of up to $1,000, plus flight insurance, baggage loss or delay, travel assistance and various types of medical and death coverage. The cost for 15 days is $105, a little less than our penalties. (That doesn’t count the dollar-pound exchange loss, which insurance wouldn’t cover, Nor does it count the hours of labor I spent on the phone, or the cost of phone calls.) For people who want a complete insurance package, this can be the way to go.

Or, had I purchased simple cancellation coverage for $6.50 per person for each $100 of coverage for our England trip, I probably would have spent $25 total for my husband and myself. In this case the money would have been well-spent.

For our next trip, will I give up my convoluted ways and rely on a travel agent to make all the arrangements? The answer: probably not, even given the hassles I endured. I enjoy the challenge of making my own vacation and finding the best deals along the way. I doubt that any stranger could have customized such a trip without me doing just as much work, anyway. Why, you should hear about the great deal I just discovered for a hotel in Sint Maarten in the Caribbean.

* TRAVEL INSIDER: Buying trip cancellation insurance. L2