The Big Mistake
The holidays were a great time for my family. After spending Christmas up at my dad’s house in Northern California, we returned home to Las Vegas in time to spend New Year’s with some of our closest friends. Except, that we were supposed to be somewhere else.
You see, I love mistake airfares and hotel rates. So much so that I sometimes speculatively book them. Thankfully I have Trip It Pro complimentary from my Barclay’s Arrival Card (my review) and it normally does a good job of automatically importing confirmation emails and letting me know of upcoming trips.
How Could I Forget?
In January 2014Â there was a mistake rate of $30 per night for New Year’s 2015 at the Best Western Grant Park. Not the ritziest hotel, but its location is great and while New Year’s in Chicago is no doubt cold, it sounded like it could be a lot of fun, so I booked three nights knowing I could cancel up until a day before.
Well as you may have guessed, I forgot. On January 3rd when Best Western sent me an email asking how my stay was, it all suddenly came rushing back. The mistake rate, my fictional plans for a New Year’s celebration in Chicago and the fact that I had just wasted some money.
Will I Actually Pay?
Luckily the rate I booked was cheap and the three night stay cost me $104. (Or did it?) The survey email said I checked out on January 2nd, so perhaps they will only charge me for one night. Either way, I screwed up. How could this happen?
The funny thing is I don’t remember which credit card I used for the booking, however I don’t see a charge on any of my cards and I suspect it was a now canceled Arrival card. I’m not sure if they will come after me for the money or not, but thus far I haven’t received anything but survey requests.
Conclusion
In the end I made a mistake. We all make mistakes sometimes. This hobby has led me to some incredible deals, however this is a reminder that my “system” is far from perfect. I think whenever I book a mistake rate again I will manually input it into my Google Calendar so I get automatic reminders on my phone.
Have you ever made a mistake like this? What system do you have for keeping track of these kind of bookings? Let me know in the comments!
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LOL, I had a booking at the same rate same place! I cancelled a week before. I guess you’ll be OK… Yea, I wonder if we should make a google calendar for our travel. That might help, but it takes a lot of work
Haha. I guess so. Perhaps a support group so we don’t mess up on mistake rates!
It sounds like you had a cancellable rate, which probably means you prepaid the $104 on your now-cancelled Barclays Arrival. So it sounds like you might be out the full $104 unless Best Western can refund the remaining balance back to your new Barclays Arrival card.
I thought that might be the case, but it doesn’t appear they charge your card up front for this type of rate. Either way I am not complaining. Just live & learn!
Well then, it sounds like you made out alright then. Glad you didn’t buy airline tickets to Chicago and forget about those flights 🙂