On February 16, 2006 my wife and I decided to make reservations through Hotwire.com for a vacation to Puerto Rico. This was a much needed vacation because we are the caregivers of my 89 & 90 year old parents, both of whom have Alzheimer's disease. Caregiving of Alzheimer's patients is extremely stressful. The vacation was only to be for six days. We did much preparation for this vacation regarding the care and medicating of my parents and our dogs and cats, a few of whom also require medication several times a day. This vacation was paid for with our tax refund. The day before we were supposed to leave, my dog developed glaucoma in her eye. This is the second time this happened, the first time resulting in the loss of sight in one eye. This was an extreme emergency which needed immediate care at a veterinary emergency facility. The treatment my dog requires now is two different kinds of drops in her eyes, one every six hours and one every twelve hours and oral medication 1 time a day. We are very worried about her eye because we don't want her to lose sight in that eye. We had to make the decision to POSTPONE our trip to Puerto Rico in order to properly take care of our dog and bring her back to the vet every two days for monitoring of the pressure in her eye. We did not trust this care to anyone but ourselves, since if one small thing went wrong, our dog would become totally blind. We called Hotwire and explained the situation and advised them we just wanted to postpone our trip and reschedule in a few weeks when we knew our dog was stabilized and out of danger of losing her eyesight. They told us we would be able to use the airfare in the future with an extra charge of $100 and a penalty of $35 each, which we expected. However, they absolutely refused to give us a refund of $1,000 plus for the hotel reservation. They pointed out that at the top of our printed itinerary there was a statement from them as follows: "Please note that all purchases are final and no exchanges or refunds are allowed." Of course, we never expected we would have an emergency so we didn't even read this statement. This has got to be illegal. They have no right to keep our $1000. As far as we can find out, the hotel is not in on this piracy and gets no part of our money. My wife has been an administrative assistant for over 20 years and has made thousands of airline and hotel reservations. ALL hotels have a cancellation policy, usually 24 hours prior to arrival or some even give you until 6 PM same day. When the cancellation did not fall within their policy times, they would charge a one night reservation fee and that's it. Airlines always charge an extra charge for changing flights as well as a penalty. As I said, we expected that. The bottom line is, we need to take this vacation and we need that $1000 to pay for a hotel reservation. We will take this as far as we can by beginning with the Better Business Bureau in order to get our money back or at least credited to the hotel. The details of our vacation are as follows: Hotwire Itinerary: 2662131071 Airline confirmation Code: KSWSCO Hotel Confirmation: 80443769 Flight Information as follows: Friday, March 10 United A/L Flt No. 1226 depart Newark A/P 8:00 AM Arrive Charlotte 10:03 AM, depart Charlotte 11:40 AM Arrive San Juan 4:04 PM Wednesday, March 165 United A/L Flt No. 968 depart San Juan 3:10 PM Arrive Charlotte 6:06 PM, depart Charlotte 7:20 PM Arrive Newark 9:06 PM Hotel information: Embassy Suites Dorado del Mar Beach-Golf Resort Check in Fri, March 10 Check out Wed, March 15 Total cost of trip: $1,656.00
