Help, my honeymoon in Costa Rica went south

Question: My wife and I recently booked a honeymoon in Costa Rica through Apple Vacations. On the morning we were supposed to leave, our flights on Delta Air Lines were canceled, and they didn’t have any other flights until two days later.

I called Apple and they simply told me to call the airline. They refused to help. Delta’s customer service was only a little more helpful. They ended up getting us to Costa Rica a day later on a different airline.

Because of this we missed one day at an all-inclusive resort and decided to stay an extra day. I again called Apple and asked them to refund our missed day and wanted to book an extra day on the end of our honeymoon. They would not refund any money for the missed day and charged us for the extra day.

I sent a letter to Apple’s customer service like they suggested I do. I have not gotten any response from them after two letters. Any advice on this issue? — Loyd Jobe, Evansville, Ind.

Answer: It sounds as if Apple could have done more to save your honeymoon. But let’s take a closer look at the facts.

Delta canceled your flight, not Apple. So in a sense, Apple was right: You would have to talk with the airline about rescheduling your flight. At the same time, Apple advertises a “beginning-to-end” vacation experience, which includes employees greeting you at your departure airport and meeting you when you arrive.

Perhaps Apple raised the bar a little high when it promised “the ultimate in a quality vacation experience.”

I contacted Apple, and a few other details emerged. First, the company says you were offered travel insurance, which would have protected your vacation investment. You declined, according to Apple.

So technically, the delay wasn’t Apple’s fault and you didn’t buy its insurance. It owed you nothing, in a contractual sense.

But who cares about contracts? This is your honeymoon, and you booked a vacation with a company that you believed would take care of you rather than do just what’s legally required of it.

I always recommend that for once-in-a-lifetime vacations like yours, travelers consider the services of a travel agent who specializes in honeymoons. I think an agent would be able to offer this kind of personalized attention you require for your Costa Rica getaway.

It turns out Apple asked your resort for a date swap, which would have allowed you to stay an extra day at your hotel, but it turned them down. I think you might have started a dialogue with your hotel, letting them know that this was your honeymoon and that you didn’t really want to lose the last day of a special vacation.

Next time — and I really hope there isn’t a next time — you might want to either send an e-mail to Apple Vacations or ask for a return receipt from the post office. The company had no record of either of your letters.

Apple contacted your resort again on your behalf and secured a $184 refund for the last night of your vacation. It also sent you two $100 travel certificates.

(Photo: Jaq me/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • SirWired

    “Who cares about contracts?” You both do, as they set the minimum you can expect from both sides.

    While it is great when one side of the contract decides to more than the minimum, it certainly isn’t a reason for anger when you are held to your contract, especially if you had been given the opportunity to pay to prevent unexpected problems.

    If fuel prices went up, and the airline sent you a letter saying: “We guessed wrong on fuel prices, and our CEO needs a bonus payment to buy the yacht he’s had his eye on for years! If he doesn’t buy it now, he’ll miss out on this very special deal! We could have bought hedging contracts which would have protected us, but we decided it would be a better idea to just beg for help if things went south. Please send us an extra $20 per ticket… pretty please!” How ridiculous does that sound? Would they find ANY takers?

    While its nice that Apple went back for a second round of begging with the resort, they had already done more than the minimum here; without your imprimatur, Chris, they probably would have been unable to get the resort to do anything else.

    If you want to protect yourself against the unexpected, buy travel insurance. Pretty much any halfway decent policy would have covered this. (For those naysayers out there, I’ve had to file two claims in the last year on trip insurance, and both were paid without any denials, appeals, or major hassles.)

  • Brootsquad

    In this case Apple could have done the right thing right away, even though they didn’t HAVE to, so that’s disappointing. But good to see they did help after Chris’ intervention.

    I will say that I would never use Apple Vacations again, personally, because of their terrible customer service and shifty employees. I had a horrible experience with them in Mexico and their customer service response was horrendous.

  • MrsKruse

    Apple should have been able to help them rearrange their airfare. Why didn’t the honeymooners use a travel agent who did Apple Vacations? I’m not one to push using a travel agent (I use one about 25% of the time, the rest I book on my own), but you can almost always get a discount on the prices Apple advertises by using one of their agents, who normally get volume discounts. You get a person and a discount…doesn’t sound so bad to me. We saved another 10% off the posted Apple price last year on a vacation to Mexico by using an agent. And when our flight home in the evening got cancelled and the airline didn’t want to do anything to get us home that night, our travel agent stepped in and got the airline to transfer our tickets to another airline.

  • http://worldphotojournal.com G

    I would not contract a vacation through a travel agency in the first place. last time I did that was in 2003 after expedia sent me to a hotel in miami I didn’t like and they didn’t want to change my reservations. I had to stay the entire vacation in the same hotel. the hotel was willing to cancel my reservation but they say because I pre-paid with expedia now I can’t and I have to call them.

    in my opinion, if you book all yourself directly, you will have more flexibility negotiating terms and changing dates directly with hotels and airlines.

  • jonathan

    @SirWired: I’m becoming quite a fan of yours… Again, you summed it up so succinctly: insurance, insurance, insurance. I am ever amazed at disappointed honeymooners, who may have expended tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding, and then skimp on a couple hundred bucks for all-inclusive insurance.

  • Jake

    @SirWired

    Didn’t the cruise lines do exactly what you outlined when fuel prices shot up a year or two ago?

  • http://www.roamingtales.com Caitlin @ Roaming Tales

    Yes, travel insurance is a sensible precaution when you travel abroad, especially for a honeymoon. In Australia we say that if you can’t afford travel insurance, you can’t afford to travel. Admittedly that’s mainly because of the health insurance component, since most Australians don’t have private health insurance because of universal public health care. Americans, on the other hand, may see travel insurance as optional because their health insurance may already cover them for at least the medical side. Anyway, I digress…

    Loyd could have bought travel insurance from Apple. He could also have bought his own independent policy. And maybe he should have. But all that is entirely beside the point in this situation!

    All the insurance would do is cover him for the financial loss. That’s great as a last resort but the role of a travel agent is to attempt to make things right so there is no financial loss in the first place. The point to booking flights through a travel agent rather than direct is that they can contact the airline and pull some strings for you if your flight is cancelled. The point to booking accommodation through a travel agent rather than direct is that they will negotiate with the hotel/resort and use their influence as bulk customers to get dates moved when necessary. A refund is all very well, but I’m sure Loyd and his wife would prefer not to have to curtail their honeymoon in the first place.

    If, after all that, there is still a financial loss, then I guess it does come down to travel insurance. But it should never get to that point if the travel agent is worth its salt. Otherwise, there really is not much point in the continued existence of travel agencies, is there?

  • flutiefan

    “Who cares about contracts?”???? Chris, I am quite disappointed with you. In some cases, like this one, the customer is most certainly NOT always right.

  • Mel

    Chris…. it’s great that you went to bat for these people, but sometimes I have to say I get frustrated at the number of people who think that every inconvenience or every disappointment needs some form of reimbursement. They didn’t purchase insurance, and when you take on cases like this it makes me wonder how many people think “I don’t need it, if something goes wrong, I’ll ask Chris Elliott to step in on my behalf”? I read a lot of legitimate travel and consumer complaints on your site that truly deserve the intervention of an advocate, but then I read things like this, that while they stir my “oh that sucks” vein, don’t seem to be maybe as “deserving.” If it weren’t for you, these people wouldn’t have gotten anything if it weren’t for you, and now you’ve basically reinforced their lack of preparation. Tsk tsk, as a parent, you know better than to reward the wrong behavior!

  • Joe Farrell

    No no no – they did NOT either buy Airline tickets from Delta nor did they buy hotel accommodation FROM the hotel – they bought a comprehensive vacation package from Apple Vacations and Apple failed to provide the paid for vacation on the date promised – THAT is the breach of contract. Last time I checked you could take American, Lan Chile, TACA and United to Costa Rica from the US, along with Delta. This person gave Apple Vacations money for a trip leaving from date X to date Y – period. Apple needed – when the airline canceled the flight – to put them on another flight – no matter the cost to Apple.

    One need only read their extensive self-aggrandizement here:

    http://www.applevacations.com/showStatic.do?command=showStaticPage&targetPage=/static/promotions/hp/why_apple_vacations.html

    to see that they are selling a complete experience – they are not Expedia splitting their hotel commission with you by adding on a hotel to a flight.

    Apple needed to get them to Costa Rica the day promised. Apple was the one who needed travel insurance – not the customer.

  • Carver

    @Chris

    Keep up the good work. You help alot of people. Some of your readers have their own opinion as to whom is deserving of help, and are very vocal about sharing. Of course, some of your readers are also omniscient and never make mistakes either.

    I have no doubt that you have a criteria by which you decide who to help. Let those readers who have “greater’ clarity and vision start their own blogs.

  • http://www.h1k22.com irfan

    looks like I never experienced anything like that .. thanks for sharing this experience. Travel insurance is so we need

  • http://www.roamingtales.com Caitlin @ Roaming Tales

    Joe Farrell said: “Apple needed to get them to Costa Rica the day promised. Apple was the one who needed travel insurance – not the customer.”

    This is completely spot on.

    Insurance can provide last-resort financial compensation when it all goes south but it doesn’t remove the contractual obligation of the travel provider.

  • Arizona Road Warrior

    The first mistake in this situation was that the Jobes didn’t dealt with a professional brick & mortar travel agent. I totally agree with you that travelers (especially travelers with limited experiences, travelers going on an once-in-a-lifetime trip, travelers going on international trips, honeymooners, etc.) should consider the services of a professional brick & mortar travel agent.

    The second mistake was that the Jobes dealt directly with the travel provider. Apple Vacations is not a travel agent but they are a travel provider. It is be guess that the Jobes didn’t even received a discount from Apple.

    The third mistake was that the Jobes didn’t purchase travel insurance. With reduced airline capacity and with flights being full, there is a strong probability that it might take a day or two to get to your final destination especially if most of the airlines has only one flight to your destination.

    In regards to Apple Vacations, they should have done a better job. They acted as a travel agent in this situation and they should have performed the services of one when the flight was cancelled.

  • Arizona Road Warrior

    @ Mel – “Chris…. it’s great that you went to bat for these people, but sometimes I have to say I get frustrated at the number of people who think that every inconvenience or every disappointment needs some form of reimbursement.”
    - – - – - – - — – -
    If the Jobes were driving their own vehicle on vacation and they had car problems causing them to miss a night in the hotel (a pre-paid non-changeable non-refundable reservation; it was past the cancellation deadline, etc.), would they ask GM, Ford, etc. to pay for the night? Things do happen in life and that is why you purchase insurance to cover a portion of the risks that you are not willing to assume.

  • http://www.cutcat.com ChelseaGirl

    What is the point of booking through a vacation company if they are not going to assist you when things go wrong? Apple should have assisted with the airline problem, and I do not believe their customer service department saying they have “no record” of the letter. Most of these companies are all the same. They say their customer service is great, that they do everything for you, that they will take care of you…it’s all BS.

    Of course the customers should have booked travel insurance, particularly as this was their honeymoon. It amazes me that people will plan a honeymoon, which I’m sure they want to be perfect, and book through companies they don’t know much about, plus they don’t buy insurance. I would rather plan a trip myself unless I get a personal recommendation, from someone whose opinion I trust, about a travel agent they have used more than once.

  • http://www.tourrica.com/ Costa Rica

    I have travled with Apple vacations before, and the important thing is to remember that they are middle men working on commission and do not have much to any control once you are on the vacation.

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