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Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

Nancy642
Explorer C

Can I cancel my existing reservation and rebook at the sale price?

10 REPLIES 10

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

Yes, although you're better off to "change" the flight instead of cancelling. Just change it to the exact same flight at the lower fare and you'll get a travel credit to use within a year of the original booking. Be sure to keep a note of the confirmation number so you can apply the credit later, it isn't saved as a credit within your account. 

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

chgoflyer
Aviator A

@Anonymous2771 wrote:

Yes, although you're better off to "change" the flight instead of cancelling. Just change it to the exact same flight at the lower fare and you'll get a travel credit to use within a year of the original booking. Be sure to keep a note of the confirmation number so you can apply the credit later, it isn't saved as a credit within your account. 


Good advice!

 

One exception to note: If you've booked a "refundable" fare, such as Business Select, Anytime or Senior, and you need to make a change for any reason -- don't. For these fares, always cancel and rebook. Otherwise you'll lose the refundability, if needed at a later time.

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

triceeey7
Explorer C
As a csa, say working the ticket counter, I am not sure that we encounter transactions where we rebook the same ticket at the sale price, and refund back the difference. I have only seen this happen when a passenger downgrades from a business to an "anytime" or "wanna get away" fare, but not a reissue for the same ticket type.

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

bwoods1013
Explorer C

How do I change to lower price and get future credit?

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

@bwoods1013 see my post a couple messages up in this thread. When viewing the reservation online in your account you'll see a "change" option. 

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

jjsanders
Explorer C

Also, you may want to consider when you booked the original flight and when you are changing it. If you booked Early Bird, I believe the rebooked flight recalculates the Early Bird feature and may assign a later boarding position.  If there is a large gap of time between the original booking and the changed booking and the savings are minimal, you may not want to make the change to ensure a better position during boarding.

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

FEB18
Explorer C

If you book with points and the same flight change to less points can I to the change to use less points. Also I have early bird will I loss that if I do ?

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

@FEB18 Yes, use the change flight option mentioned above to rebook and you'll get a refund of points if there was a price drop. If you change the flight, EarlyBird stays on the flight. Canceling and rebooking the flight loses EarlyBird. It's also been mentioned that changing the flight like you're proposing adjusts your place in the queue for EarlyBird and your boarding position will probably not be as good as it would be if you didn't rebook. You'll want to consider if the price drop is worth a drop in boarding position. 

Re: Booked 3 days ago and now a price drop.

readallday55
Explorer C

So do I understand this correctly?  I booked a WGA fare with points and the price/points requirement has dropped.  I use the "change option" to repick the exact same flights at the cheaper price/points and the "credited" points will be redeposited into my account.  Are the refunded points subject to an expiration date,the same as the cash payment is?