PSA: Don’t Make Changes To Your Fiji Awards On Alaska’s Website

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Update: Alaska was able to get Fiji to restore our flights in business class!

Originally posted on 8/10:

Earlier today there was unprecedented business class award space available between the US and the South Pacific. Most dates are now gone, though I just updated that post with the scraps of what’s left.

During that feeding frenzy, I rushed to grab 2 tickets from LA to Fiji for 110K miles each in business class round-trip, figuring I’d grab that and then decide where to go from Fiji as dates were rapidly disappearing.

After I found award space to fly after the outbound flight to New Zealand’s north island and return from the south island, I clicked on modify ticket and Alaska’s website had no problem offering the new itinerary for the same mileage rate and an additional $22.90 in taxes.

I clicked to make that change and the confirmation page looked fine, but I didn’t get an email confirmation of the change and the website was no longer able to pull up my itinerary.

On my account I saw that Alaska refunded the 220K miles to my account and debited 220K miles for the change, so that looked fine.

I sent Alaska a DM on Twitter for my itinerary to be emailed to me, but they sent me the same Los Angeles-Fiji flight without the New Zealand flights. They said to call in to get the updated itinerary.

Alaska’s hold time quoted 45 minutes, so I selected the callback option. When they called back the agent said that during the change they lost the Los Angeles-Fiji flights and only had the Fiji-New Zealand flights.

Ouch.

A manager was able to reach their global partner liaison desk who saw where their website messed up and said they would try contacting Fiji to get our flights back, but that the process could take a week or two.

For now, we wait. But in case you thought of doing the same as I did…don’t.