Booked A Non-Refundable Hotel By Mistake? Here Are The Moves That Get Your Money Back

Recently I wrote about cancelling non-refundable hotel bookings. Something that’s very ‘your mileage may vary’ that I first wrote about 15 years ago is calling and upgrading your rate to a more expensive cancellable one, and then cancelling. Hilton has long had a small fee to change non-refundable bookings. Sometimes non-refundable means non-refundable. And other times you literally just make a mistake. Maybe you clicked confirm by accident when you were just pricing the reservation, or maybe you booked the wrong date. Then this mistake that you realize instantly can turn into a pain, even though it’s usually correctable. This week’s Frequent Miler podcast has Nick describing his ordeal fixing a mistake he made when he booked a non-refundable reservation through the Bilt Rewards portal. Whenever you’re dealing with a third party booking, there’s more people or machines talking to each other in a game of telephone with two cups and a string. Nick: This is the story of my experience booking a hotel through Bilt. I somehow accidentally booked a nonrefundable hotel room while I was trying to check the price. I never entered a credit card; it charged a card connected to my Bilt account through Bilt Dining. I don’t know exactly how that happened, and I’m not placing 100% of the blame on Bilt. It was a strange situation. But I received an email confirming a nonrefundable booking that wasn’t cheap, so I immediately contacted Bilt. I told them, “I did not click any book button. I know I didn’t. This isn’t my first rodeo.” After first putting me through a frustrating AI bot, Bilt said it would contact its hotel partner. I was told I would hear back within three days if the hotel agreed to cancel the reservation without a fee. He didn’t hear back from Bilt, he needed a room at the hotel anyway he just didn’t want this booking (which was third party, not direct as some Bilt reservations are), so he decided to keep it. But then when his plans changed and he couldn’t actually use it, he called the hotel and they told him it was already cancelled and refunded when he first made the request! It just still showed active at Bilt. He’d even gotten his money back months earlier but didn’t realize it. I received the refund, so I’m grateful that Bilt contacted the hotel and got it handled. I had only been half-confident that they would do anything after I said I hadn’t intended to make the booking. But it’s wild that Bilt never told me the outcome—and that, months after the hotel canceled the reservation, it still appears as active in my Bilt app. The thing to understand here is that this required the hotel to cancel, it required information flow back to Expedia which would have processed the booking and then from Expedia back to Bilt and it appears the breakdown happened there. So you need to follow up on these things, at least with your own credit card statements to see that the money gets returned (that was the important part here, and it happened). I recently had a similar situation. I like using Rove Miles not just for points transfers but for hotel bookings because: They usually give you 1.5 cents per point And you can do this with their ‘direct booking’ reservations That means it’s money to spend on hotel stays that still earn hotel points, loyalty status credit, and receive elite benefits However I booked a hotel for the wrong night. I was off by one night. I realize it as soon as I hit confirm. It was 100% my fault. It was a prepaid room but it was book direct. I opened a chat window, told them what happened, and they confirmed that as long as the hotel was willing to cancel they’d refund my points. I rang up the hotel, got them to agree and even email this to me. I shared that back to Rove in the chat and they even credited the points to me instantly while I was in the chat. Generally airline tickets can be cancelled within 24 hours of purchase. There’s no requirement of this for prepaid, non-cancellable hotel bookings. Consumer protections against airlines are often signficiantly greater. Airlines have their own federal regulator. The federal rule is that customers can cancel tickets within 24 hours of purchase as long as they booked at least 7 days prior to travel. American enforces a 2-day rule. Delta does not enforce an advance purcahse requirement at all. Southwest publishes an advance purchase requirement but doesn’t enforce it. Many hotel booking sites used to publish similar 24 hour cancel rules. Those were nerfed long ago. However there are still formally some: Airbnb allows 24 hour free cancels for stays under 28 nights, though hotels also list on their platform and those are generally exempt. Booking.com but this varies by property California hotels and short-term rentals: by law have to honor cancellation within 24 hours after confirmation if booked at least 72 hours prior to check-in. Here’s the Booking.com guidance on California hotel cancels. Topics on this page