Refund of Cancellation Protection Fee

[CanuckTravlr]

It appears that the banning of Canadians crossing the land border into the USA will be extended until at least October 21st and quite possibly until sometime in November, according to very recent reports. We have three weeks booked in November at Tuscany Village and Ocean 22. We have decided it is time to pull the plug and cancel these reservations. Is there any chance we might be refunded the two $69 Cancellation Protection fees we paid?

At the time they were booked in March, the HGVC waiving of the cancellation policy was to end on August 1st. As a result, for the first time, we paid the Cancellation Protection fee for each reservation, in case for some reason we could not go. In the meantime, the waiving of the cancellation policy was extended to October 1st, so we can now cancel before the end of the month and get all our points back, even without the Cancellation Protection.

I assume we we will have to eat the $59 booking fee for each reservation in any case? No problem with that and we are prepared to eat the cancellation protection fees, too, if necessary. Does anyone have any recent experience with this? Would a call to customer service be at all worthwhile before I formally cancel? Or is it pretty cut-and-dried that we have to eat both sets of fees?

 

[Talent312]

Becuz your bookings are outside the current ban, don't count on it.
I doubt they'd refund any fee for a booking that you _could_ make.
But call C/S. Tell them that the ban as it stands disrupted your travel.
Maybe they'll take pity on poor Canadians stuck on the other side.
.
.

 

[BingoBangoBongo]

I had a reservation earlier in the year that I paid for protection just before the started or extended the wavier. I called CS and they refunded the fee. YMMV

 

[CanuckTravlr]

I had a reservation earlier in the year that I paid for protection just before the started or extended the wavier. I called CS and they refunded the fee. YMMV

Thanks very much for that info. Based on your experience I will give them a call.

Being an international owner, Stan Soroka recently announced they will be moving our refunded, previously-saved points to the new, special "reserve" account, good until the end of 2023. They will also save our remaining 2021 club points for free to 2022 saved points. That gives us a lot more flexibility to use them over the next two years.

HGVC has been very, very fair in their treatment of owners throughout the pandemic, IMO. If they do refund the protection fees, then that is just an added bonus. If they don't, it's not a big deal, but now I know it's at least worth a shot!

 

[CanuckTravlr]

Just a follow-up to what happened. We called HGVC corporate customer service. We explained our situation. She then politely and efficiently handled the cancellation of our bookings (which we had intended to do ourselves online) and also took the time to explain how our released points and any remaining 2021 Club points would be saved automatically into either Reserve Points or 2022 Saved Points. She then indicated she would put in a request to have our Protection Cancellation fees refunded. The two fees showed up on Thursday as credits on our Visa account!! Another example of great HGVC customer service!!