Dear stumbled,
Last September 26th, I booked a ski trip for my family for December at Sheraton Vacation Club's real estate in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I immediately saw the confirmation email and realized that I had actually booked a reservation for that night on September 26th. I think it was reset in some way when I navigated the website. I cancelled my reservation just 2 minutes after my purchase, roamed my business and saved the water from my basement when Hurricane Helen approached our home in the Asheville, North Carolina area. We quickly lost power for a few days and when we returned online in early October, we found a $560 fee on our credit card due to a cancelled booking. I called twice to the customer service number listed in the email and it didn't reach anyone, so I disputed the fee via credit card, but lost. I almost gave up. Can I help? Allison, Candler, North Carolina
Dear Allison,
Federal regulations require airlines to refund reservations cancelled within 24 hours of booking. Do hotel rooms and vacation rentals have similar laws?
no. But if so, it would have not helped you anyway due to the nature of your error. The 24-hour airfare cancellation rule applies only if you book a flight for more than seven days in the future. (I got it wrong) I booked a room for just a few hours before my travel day.
This is a very specific kind of slip-up, and can be easily created on the current default, reservation site, rather than a date that arrives a week later, and not a blank field (very useful). For those who have made the mistake in other ways, such as by making a mistake by mistake, disrupting Monterrey, California, or confusing Monterrey, Mexico, most properties offer penalty-free cancellations of up to 2, 7, or 30 days prior to check-in. The booking email I received from the Sheraton Steamboat Resort Villas at Steamboat Springs on September 26th said I could freely cancel it until September 23rd.
But, literally in two minutes, as your documents show, should you be punished for such mistakes, especially for mistakes you caught?
If you call instead of clicking on the cancellation option in your booking email, you are likely to receive a refund, says Kate Sandsey, a spokeswoman for the Marriott Vacation Club, which owns Sheraton Vacation Club (and split from the hotel's Conglomerate Marriott International in 2011). Despite this, she said the company is allowing you a refund.
“There are some exceptions based on individual locations and special events, but guests can cancel their reservations without penalty within 24 hours of booking,” she wrote in an email. She recommended that customers “call the specific resort directly” if they can't solve the issue by calling customer service.
Other major hospitality players, such as BWH Hotel (owner of Best Western) and Expedia Group (the brands include hotels.com and Travelocity), said that although they were not written, they resemble the policy.
So, where did things go wrong here, except for your first error? You thought it wasn't unfair, and that clicking the Cancel button would automatically retrieve your money. However, in these circumstances, travelers should never assume that human logic and corporate storage systems are the same. Even as a skeptic, if I had called immediately instead of clicking, I bet that I'd received a refund or at least changed the date to suit my December plan.
When you finally made the call after about 11 days, I think you still had a good shot to reverse the error, but here's your biggest mistake. According to the phone records you sent to me, you waited 14 minutes the first time you called, then 2 seconds and finally 20 minutes. In 2025, it's painful to say that it's not enough. They had to give at least 45 minutes or an hour. In the meantime, you probably had done chores, walks, and past the worst-case scenarios and got caught up in a stumbling line of the past.
Alternatively, you can try again at a different time. When I tested the same number twice at different times of the day, I quickly got through one and then one after six minutes. As Sandosi suggested after the fact, you could have also called the resort directly. That number that appears on the page you booked also took me straight away to someone.
Instead, I went to the credit card chargeback route. Regular readers know how I feel about it, and here's why. I read at least January emails from my tripped inbox, ending with the variation of “Even though I'm a loyal card holder since 2003, I was on my side with the company (insert a famous financial institution), (insert a player in the major travel industry), “Even though I'm a loyal card holder, I had to be at CAHAHOTOTOT”! ”
But the real reason is that credit card issuers have limited investigative rights. Chargebacks are perfect for very specific and simple situations, such as shamelessly fraudulent transactions, blatant non-selling of goods and services (particularly useful when a company goes bankrupt), and duplicate fees. Unless the company explicitly violates terms and conditions (and cites certain terms) or is lucky and the company does not respond to the card issuer, the more complicated one is the long shot. Don't think you won the first time you received the refund. It is part of a standard process and is very often short-lived.
Let's end with some good news, at least for Brazilian readers. Unlike the US and the European Union, domestic travelers in Brazil spend a week booking online and then canceling without penalty. It applies not only to hotels, but also to Airbnbs and most other products and services purchased online.
