Saturday Selection: Lukewarm price freezes, Priority Pass access with your credit card, and more

Happy Saturday night. Tonight’s selections from the last couple of weeks around the web include and understanding of how the Capital One price freeze works (….or more accurately, how it doesn’t work), reasons to book one-ways vs round trip or vice versa, the possible end to the Emirates and JetBlue partnership, and more.

Delta Cancels $2700 Fare, Calls it Erroneous

When it comes to stuff getting honored or not getting honored or missing out on great fares that I don’t see quickly enough, my attitude is typically that sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. However, airlines have taken this seller’s remorse thing a few steps too far. Rocky at Travel Codex covers a fare that Delta recently sold…and then cancelled more than 24 hours later.

Is Capital One Price Freeze A Scam? Here’s How The Service Cost Me $300

Ariana at PointChaser covers the Capital One Price Freeze feature, which seems lukewarm at best. While I wouldn’t necessarily call it a scam, Ariana shows that they don’t freeze availability, nor do they give you any indication that availability is slipping away. The issue here is the lack of communication / transparency. You could place a 12-day freeze that looks frozen on days 6, 7, 8, 9, etc. even though tickets actually sold out on Day 3. Capital One won’t notify you and apparently doesn’t display that tickets are sold out in their online interface (Ariana reports that Capital One only showed that the price for the flight had increased by $200 — well within the price freeze range of a difference up to $400 — not that it had sold out, prompting her to assume her trip was still frozen). In a situation where availability is drying up, you could get burned if you assumed that hold was still good until Day 12.

Should You Book One Way Or Roundtrip?

View from the Wing writes about whether or not round trip booking makes sense in a world without change fees. Personally, I’ve long booked separate one-ways. I rarely ever book a round trip ticket unless it is paid fare international travel. Domestically, I book all one-ways and the same is true for my international award tickets except in instances where the airline program requires round trip booking or offers a discount for doing it — I just don’t want to be tied to a single airline nor do I want to deal with any hassle if I want to change just one direction or the other. All that said, there are some instances where you might want to book round trip and Gary covers both sides of the coin.

JetBlue Partner Awards No Longer Bookable w/Emirates Miles?

Milenomics covers the news that JetBlue award tickets do not appear to be bookable via Emirates at the moment. In the current environment, dwindling partner award availability seems to be a thing across the board, but in this case awards are available to American and Milenomics mentions that someone was told that Emirates is ending its partnership with JetBlue. I always take it with a grain of salt when a customer service representative — even a supervisor’s supervisor’s supervisor —  makes some bold claim about airline strategy and partnerships, but in this case I wouldn’t be shocked.

You Can Access Priority Pass Lounges with Your Venture X Card

This post from Danny the Deal Guru is a timely tip for me. I have long kept my Priority Pass card in a specific pocket in my backpack, but over the past couple of years I received a bunch of new cards. While I do have “Ritz” written on one of my Priority Pass cards, I haven’t actually used the card since whenever it was last replaced. My family will be flying out of an airport with a Priority Pass restaurant next week. Knowing that we can use our Venture X credit cards (once we enroll online) is nice peace of mind in case my Priority Pass doesn’t work (or if it turns out to be the wrong one).

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