Changing flight and reimbursement

[petrouchka]

A few weeks ago, I bought my ticket to fly from my home city to School A. I recently received an interview invite from another school, B. The only way for me to make this would be to fly from my home city to School B and then from School B to A. Both schools offered to reimburse my costs. My question - would it still be possible for School A to reimburse me when I won't be using the ticket I bought at all? A refund would not be possible because the airline is inflexible. Should I bring this up to the school? Advice?

[iphi]

Well if you can cover your own costs from School B to School A (or if School B will cover them) you need never tell School A you didn't use the original ticket. A bit dishonest, maybe, but I can't see any other way that you would be reimbursed. Telling School A "I rearranged my flight to visit another school, now cover the difference!" probably wouldn't go over too well.

[Loric]

Are you sure it cant be upgrades or modified? At all?

 

A call to the airline to at least hash it out a little is probably in order. Most bookings have some wiggle room - you cant cancel, but you can change the how/what of it.

 

All else fails, fly back and forth - get you some free airline miles.

[Eigen]

Depends. If you're being reimbursed directly by the school, most schools will probably require a boarding pass to process the reimbursement.

[petrouchka]

Ok I will try to call the airline (United). From their policy online, they seem very inflexible and charge $200 to change the flight. This is more than the cost of the ticket itself. :-\ If I cancel, they say I will get 0 money back. Regarding reimbursement using the boarding passes - theoretically I could check in at home and just send that in right? Besides, some airlines like Southwest collect the boarding passes upon boarding, so it maybe just a purchase receipt would be okay?

[TakeruK]

Schools are sometimes able to reimburse for cancellation fees, but there are probably certain conditions. For example, last year, one of the research trips I was supposed to take was cancelled for reasons out of our control (the equipment we were to use was not usable). We had to rebook for a different date, so the school reimbursed me for all costs, including the change fees ($150 in this case). So, this type of fee is not necessarily strictly "reimbursable" (if that's a word).

 

However, in your case, I agree with others that I don't think School A would be keen on paying for the flight you didn't use because you wanted to go to School B first. Also, it may not be possible for School B to cover all the costs of traveling from B to A. When I did a multi school visit, I went from home to A to B to home. A would only pay for half of the total travel costs, so that would be home to A plus half of A to B, while B will pay for the other half of A to B, plus B to home. So, you might not be able to get B to pay for all of the trip from A to B.

 

The boarding pass issue is very easy to resolve. I always save PDFs of my boarding passes. In the past, I used to print multiple copies--one to leave at home, one to take with me, and one stored elsewhere in my carryon in case I lose the first one. Now, I am able to use my mobile phone to check in, so I just keep the PDF as a backup.

 

Finally, I would argue that you are committing pretty serious fraud if you claim expenses for a flight you did not take. When you sign those expense forms, you are signing that you are not making any false claims. I think making a false claim here is pretty much equivalent to lying on your applications. It might even be worse, because academics are funded by public funds based on an understanding of trust and many public institutions are under scrutiny for "wasting" these funds. This is why many schools will not reimburse alcohol even though in the grand scheme of things, the money academics spend on alcohol/meals while traveling is tiny compared to all the other costs to taxpayers, but academics are an easy target. When we commit frauds like this, we are really hurting our credibility and potentially, future support.

 

Normally, I am a person that believes in committing small transgressions to prevent a bigger one, and all that self-preservation stuff (e.g. I might choose to lie to a prof if they ask me about my plans for having children in grad school), but in this case, you have a ton of other choices that do not require fraud and would not hurt you significantly. I think it would be very irresponsible to choose the fraud route (unless there is something else you haven't considered).

 

If it was me, I would call School B and let them know that I can't make it to their interview because I have one scheduled with School A already. Ask if School B can reschedule me. It's perfectly fair to prioritize School A's invite over B's because they asked first.

[petrouchka]

Hi TakeruK,

 

I appreciate your input, but I'd like to clarify a few things. I am still attending the entire Open House for School A. I only wish to cancel my flight from my home to School A because it would not be feasible to fly from my house to A to my house to B to my house. The cost incurred by School A would remain the same, whether I took or missed the flights. Both schools are high on my interest list.

 

School B has already stated that they will cover the cost of the other flight.

 

Cancelling the flight will lead to an additional charge of $200 and I will not receive any refund of the money that I paid from the airline. And likely no reimbursement either. :-/

 

Does anyone have actual experience with a similar situation?

[TakeruK]

Hi TakeruK,

 

I appreciate your input, but I'd like to clarify a few things. I am still attending the entire Open House for School A. I only wish to cancel my flight from my home to School A because it would not be feasible to fly from my house to A to my house to B to my house. The cost incurred by School A would remain the same, whether I took or missed the flights. Both schools are high on my interest list.

 

School B has already stated that they will cover the cost of the other flight.

 

Cancelling the flight will lead to an additional charge of $200 and I will not receive any refund of the money that I paid from the airline. And likely no reimbursement either. :-/

 

That is the situation I did understand. I still maintain that it is fraud to claim an expense for a flight you did not take. It's not about how much money School A actually spends, but expenses have to have legit paper trails. As I said above, the whole reimbursement process hinges on the honesty of the academics that make the claims. Claiming a flight you did not take is fraud. 

 

If you let School A know what is really going on, and they agreed to pay for that flight you did not take anyways, then that's another story. But based on my experience claiming expenses like this, it is rare (but not impossible) that this will be the case. From my point of view, as an academic dependent on public funds, I am calling you out on this because I feel that fraud committed by academics will hurt all publicly funded academics. Obviously you are free to act in whatever way you want, and I'm not going to try pester you any further about this after this post unless you wish to discuss this further.

 

But, based on what is presented here, it sounds like you do have an alternative to fraud (i.e. tell School A the truth and/or tell School B that you already booked for School A and thus must reschedule). No one forced you to change your plans and fly to School B first--this is a personal choice you made for yourself so you should bear the extra costs. I would say this is similar to booking "economy plus" for extra legroom--many schools will only reimburse for the cost of a standard economy ticket. If you want to make the personal choice of purchasing extra legroom, you'll have to be willing to pay for the additional fees.

 

Maybe you do have some other reason for arranging the trip this way though that you are choosing to not disclose. So, I do have some actual experience with filing expense reports/visits that might be helpful to you if you do choose to not tell School A the whole story. You should keep these facts in mind (I do mean this as sincere advice because if you end up choosing to do this, I will assume that you have a good enough reason to do so):

 

1. How are you getting from Airport in School A to School A? If you are going to be claiming e.g. a shuttle or bus ticket, remember that the financial office at School A may audit your receipts and you should make sure that the timing of your flight from home to School A is consistent with the timing on your bus/shuttle ticket. If a graduate student picks you up, make sure you tell the department the real time you will be arriving at the airport, so they don't go off your ticket. 

 

2. If you booked a roundtrip ticket from Home to School A, some airlines will cancel your return ticket if you don't actually board the plane on your departing flight. So, check with United to make sure this won't happen to you.

 

3. My experience with United's cancellation policy is that the fee is not an extra fee charged on top of the cancellation. That is, when I booked my $500 ticket and had to cancel it because of science issues, they gave me $350 credit towards a future United flight. This was a flight that had no cancellation/refund policy, which really means you cannot cancel the flight and get the money back, but you can still cancel the flight and get credit. In your case, since the flight is less than $200, it would probably mean that you just won't get any future credit, not that you have to pay an additional $200 (otherwise, that would just encourage their customers to just not show up for the flight, which is not ideal). Check with United though. If so, then since you are still using the second half of your round trip ticket, then at most you are losing out on $100 if you come clean with School A and they decide to not reimburse you and you choose not to / cannot reschedule School B. $100 is not small change, though, but I'm not personally sure if it would be worth the potential consequences if your fraud is found out (or even stressing about being found out).

 

4. It's unlikely that the faculty/grad students you talk to will compare stories with the people who will file your paperwork, so it's probably okay to answer honestly when they ask you questions like "where else did you visit?". But I guess if you want to be super careful, make sure everything you say to everyone at School A is consistent. 

[petrouchka]

Thanks for your response. What you say about fraud does make sense, though I disagree with your comparison of this situation to booking a seat with extra legroom. In that case, the school incurs an excess expense on my behalf, which is not the case here. For instance, School B did offer to book and reimburse a roundtrip from my home to the school. This would have left School A's flight in place. I don't see how it would make it any better if I chose to do this, when I knew there would be a cheaper alternative for School B (they save one leg of the trip essentially) that would not require any extra funding from School A. So theoretically, I would be saving academic funds across departments with this rearrangement. Anyway, I agree that it would be good to speak with the school in question about this, and will do so soon. No point in stressing over it really.

 

On another note, I must say that United's policy is terrible. I called today (to the tone of a rather unfriendly agent), and essentially I incure a penalty of $200 for EACH LEG of the flight I modify. Canceling leads to a credit of the price I paid minus $200, which is ridiculously high. From what I've read online, it does seem that a good number of people chose to forfeit their money instead of giving United the opportunity to make even more money from their ticket via resell. Maybe I'm just spolied by the reasonable policies of Southwest, but I will try to avoid United Airlines for future travel.

Edited January 29, 2014 by petrouchka

[Loric]

You needed home to A and back, and still do so to speak. It's not fraud to change your plans. You bought the ticket in good faith within the airlines rules.

Less than 200 is cheap, btw. I'd be seeing minimum 400 to fly out to some schools.

So then B happens. You don't need the A return. Sorry, it can't be refunded. Oh well. It happens. Really the airline needs to splice in another leg but someone over there is being a jerk. As long as your dept/return city is the same they should be able to modify and charge that price. That would be what B pays.

Alas, no. Just book a to b, b to home. Charge that to be. Don't worry. Print the receipts out and if all else fails - check in online and print boarding passes. Problem solved.

But call and ask about that leg modification. Your fee is not home-a-home with no ability to modify at all. It will cost, but can be done.

[Loric]

Also. Pull up a one way. Bet you it costs more than round trip.

Save that for in case they question why you booked what you did.

[Loric]

Note: go to flyertalk.com and ask in the United forum for help. They will say many if the same things but maybe they'll take pity and help.

[TakeruK]

Thanks for your response. What you say about fraud does make sense, though I disagree with your comparison of this situation to booking a seat with extra legroom. In that case, the school incurs an excess expense on my behalf, which is not the case here. For instance, School B did offer to book and reimburse a roundtrip from my home to the school. This would have left School A's flight in place. I don't see how it would make it any better if I chose to do this, when I knew there would be a cheaper alternative for School B (they save one leg of the trip essentially) that would not require any extra funding from School A. So theoretically, I would be saving academic funds across departments with this rearrangement. Anyway, I agree that it would be good to speak with the school in question about this, and will do so soon. No point in stressing over it really.

 

On another note, I must say that United's policy is terrible. I called today (to the tone of a rather unfriendly agent), and essentially I incure a penalty of $200 for EACH LEG of the flight I modify. Canceling leads to a credit of the price I paid minus $200, which is ridiculously high. From what I've read online, it does seem that a good number of people chose to forfeit their money instead of giving United the opportunity to make even more money from their ticket via resell. Maybe I'm just spolied by the reasonable policies of Southwest, but I will try to avoid United Airlines for future travel.

 

That's fair--on reflection, my comparison might not be that great.

 

I also agree with Loric's advice to pull up the cost of a one-way flight from A to home. If A refuses to fully reimburse for your Home-A-Home roundtrip, and if the one-way from A to Home is more than half the cost of your original roundtrip, you might have a strong case to argue for this level of reimbursement instead of only getting half of your original cost. Hopefully this will be better than no reimbursement at all. It is common for financial departments to audit your expenses by comparison to market costs of your flights. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I also think School A should reimburse you for the flight you did not take because as Loric said, you booked it in good faith and all that. It's not anyone's fault that the schedule worked out the way it did. I just think you should be upfront about it instead of telling School A that you took a flight which you did not (otherwise then I think you would have done something wrong).

 

As for United, that is a really crappy cancellation policy What incentive would any traveller have to pay the cancellation fee instead of just not using their ticket! Boo United I have other crappy experiences with United too, but for the most part, I am stuck with them because LAX is a big United hub and they end up having much cheaper fares than other airlines (so department policy means I must book them).