Never Hurt to Ask

If you love this hobby of traveling around the world for free or saving tons of coins on Air tickets/hotel stays. You should be familiar with what the title of this post says. Essentially, anything is possible, it is just matter of fact “Are you going to Ask?”.  Let me give you a few examples.

 1.      Chase SM (Secure Message)

Chase is very friendly in terms of matching Credit card offer, say you applied 30 days ago for a 40,000 points(miles) card and Chase bumped the offer to 60,000. Send them a SM and most likely they will match you. I’ve explained how here

2.      A few hundred miles short for Elite Status

I missed my flight two weeks ago and I posted my story here. After I returned home, I asked MMS Daraius what's my options, Daraius suggested me to email them and  try the "never hurt to ask".
I sent UA MileagePlus an email and they said “ no problem” within 24 hours. I am very happy that I avoided a mileagerun

Dear Mr. Lu:

Thank you for contacting the MileagePlus Service Center.

No problem. I gave you credit for your original scheduled flights on 11/5/2012 and removed the others. Please check your account in 24 hours. For technical reasons, I had to post the new flights with a date of 11/6/2012.

Regards,

MileagePlus® Service Center

Original Message Follows:

Hi, I was late for my flight from SEA-IAD-FLL, confirm# , ticket#: . The gate agent managed to rebook me to SEA-IAH-FLL. Thanks for that!

However, I am now short 246 miles to elite for 2013, which I intended to fly IAD vs IAH for the extra miles. :-)

I don't have travel plan for the rest of 2012, is that possible for you to credit me the same amount miles SEA-IAD-FLL-IAH-SEA vs SEA-IAH-FLL-IAH-FLL?

3.      Complaint and compensation

I can’t remember how many times that if I have some negative feedback(or complaint) about ground agent or flight attendant or hotel staff or room or literally anything that I feel I’m obligated to feedback to them to improve in the future.  Most of time, I received “apologized letter” and often time, I receive flight voucher/coupon/miles/points or some small gift to compensate and appreciate my feedback.

Being in the customer services industry for many years, I know this is the way we apologized to our customers and kept our customers’ loyalty and why not take it with a 5 minutes email? Never hurt to ask, right?

4.      Rule is rule, exception always occurs

Every company has their rules that they ask us to stick to it, this is quite understandable. However, tell you what, they do have exceptions. For example, Priceline.com has strict rule of no change, no refund once you booked their hotel or air flight. But if you do have some emergencies, call them, they will accommodate once you can approve it, such as email them your family doctor’s visit record.

Bottom line

Take 5 minutes of your time and don’t be afraid to ask, what do you lose anyway? Never hurt you to ask for something, the worse scenario is a “Nope”.