News notes from around the interweb:
- American AAdvantage shopping portal bonus 250 bonus miles every 2 purchases you make, up to 1000 miles total for 8 purchases by March 27.
- The UK fined Cathay Pacific $652,000 for a data breach, remember when we actually cared about GDPR?
- Over the weekend I shared a trick to get most of your money back from a Hertz prepaid reservation since Hertz isn’t providing refunds.
Oddly that prompted a Hertz spokesperson to share that they will not refund prepaid car reservations made prior to March 13 – it’s vouchers for future travel only.
Prepaid Customers with reservations affected by travel restrictions can cancel their reservation at any time or rebook to a later date at no cost. Customers with prepaid reservations made prior to March 13 not affected by travel restrictions, can change or cancel their reservation for no fee and transfer their balance to a future booking to be used within 24 months.
I replied, “Customers with prepaid reservations made prior to March 13 should be filing charge backs. There is a global pandemic. That is a force majeure event. And even if your lawyers contend otherwise it certainly constitutes ‘contract frustration.’ Your customers will remember how they are being treated.”
- As you think about those hotel events contracts, Is Coronavirus “an Excuse for Non-Performance of a Commercial Contract”?
- Silver Airways wants on the federal dole. Seriously, that’s like my neighborhood Chinese restaurant asking for federal assistance. (I was tempted to add that I’d actually miss my neighborhood Chinese place.)
- Japan’s Skymark Airlines thanks passengers during coronavirus slump with special message “Thank you for riding with us even during this difficult time.”
スカイマーク便にて。
空港も飛行機の中もガラガラだったけど、このメッセージ見てちょっとグッときたよな。ほんとに今、経営的に大変なんだな、と伝わってきた。キャンセルも無料やのにこの心配りはすごいな。 pic.twitter.com/hfiVYBbAnD
— おぽおぽ (@DQN9) March 7, 2020
@ Gary — re: Hertz, good job, get ’em! THIS customer WILL remember.
fyi, I called last week and was refunded in full on my hertz pre-paid reservation for this week. took a little pushback but got the refund. as a point of reference i’m presidents circle with them and rent quite frequently so not sure if that was the basis for their decision.
Hertz is a terrible company.
Hertz is great when everything goes right. When things go wrong…their bad side shows pretty quickly and you have to escalate everything to get anything done.
And being “President’s Circle” has only helped me like 1-2 times. Once when I got to skip a line of like 50 people waiting for cars to be washed and delivered to the rental car center.