MELROSE, MASS. (WHDH) - Judi Hayes and her family needed a vacation!
Last winter she was excited to ditch the cold weather and soak up the sun in Aruba.
Judi says, “the warm weather and swimming in the warm water and it’ll be nice for the kids to just relax on an Arub-ian beach.”
She organized a family trip with her parents and booked flights using her father’s travel points.
“It was like 700,000 points, it was a lot,” she says.
That converted to about $3,500 in plane tickets.
But weeks before they were supposed to leave, the family got some bad news.
Judi says, “my mother went into the hospital and we didn’t know what was wrong with her. The the doctor pretty much told us she has cancer or this other disease.”
Judi worked to cancel the trip.
“The hotel was very accommodating and they just canceled our reservation, no penalties no nothing,” she says.
But canceling the plane tickets wasn’t as easy.
Judi says, “they wouldn’t refund the points for the tickets—they just had said they were non-refundable tickets.”
She explained to the airline that her mother was sick and it was impossible to travel.
“It was upsetting because we could not go, I mean she was in the hospital with a rare disease. We were in complete shock so we were just hoping to at least get him his points back for the future,” Judi says.
When her calls and emails went unanswered, Judi called Solve It 7.
We contacted the airline and asked about it’s refund policy and why Judi was not being helped.
“It was more of the point of it, somebody was in the hospital, I gave them a letter from the hospital, it didn’t matter,” Judi says.
But days later the airline stepped up and agreed to refund Judi the cash value of the flights.
“We were very grateful, and appreciative, cause we never expected it,” Judi says.
(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)