One worked example per tier

Cancelling, Company by Company

There is no single cancellation rule here, and any agency that offers you one is describing a business it is not running. A trip has one rule per company. Below is a real cancellation worked in figures at each of the four tiers.

The thing to understand first

This office holds no money at any point. Each company takes its own payment and writes its own schedule. When you cancel, their schedules decide what comes back, and we cannot waive, override or refund on their behalf, because it never passed through here.

That is not a limitation chosen to protect us. It is what an agency is.

One company: cancelled four weeks out

Line	Paid	Comes back	Stays with them
The resort, seven nights	1,240	1,240	0
Returned	1,240	1,240	0

One contract, one schedule, one answer, and at four weeks it is still inside the free window. This is why the tier exists.

Two companies: cancelled four weeks out

Line	Paid	Comes back	Stays with them
The airline	470	0	470
The resort, seven nights	1,120	1,120	0
Returned	1,590	1,120	470

The room is forgiving and the fare is not, which is the shape of almost every two company cancellation. The airfare is the rigid half in every tier above one.

Three companies: cancelled four weeks out

Line	Paid	Comes back	Stays with them
The airline	690	0	690
Hotel one, four nights	620	620	0
Hotel two, four nights	690	345	345
The rail seats	90	0	90
Returned	2,090	965	1,125

Four schedules, four different answers, on the same afternoon. Two hotels in the same country cancelled differently, which is normal and is why this site never prints one reassuring percentage.

Four or more: cancelled four weeks out

Line	Paid	Comes back	Stays with them
The international airline	1,180	0	1,180
The internal air operator	340	0	340
The highland operator	1,640	410	1,230
The river lodge	980	735	245
Returned	4,140	1,145	2,995

At four weeks out on a four company trip, roughly three quarters of the money is gone. This is the single strongest argument for travel insurance on this site, and it is why the figure is printed rather than described.

What we do on the day you tell us

Within the hour: read every schedule that actually applies and send you the total, per company
That day: not one contract is touched. The figure reaches you first, and reversing your decision remains open
On your written word: each contract is cancelled in turn, and each company's own confirmation is forwarded to you
Never: on a spoken instruction alone

Changing rather than cancelling

Usually less costly and almost never simple. Changing one contract in a chain of five normally moves two others: a later flight moves a hotel night, which moves a transfer. Every change is priced across the whole chain before you commit to it, so deciding against it stays available.

Insurance, in two columns

Typically pays	Typically does not
Being ill, with a doctor to say so	Simply deciding against it
A death among your close family	Something you already knew about and did not declare at purchase
Jury service	A connection you left too little room for
A named storm once an evacuation order exists	Anything that was already public news on the day you bought the policy

The certificate is the document that decides; the summary is advertising. On four company trips the medical and evacuation cover matters more than the cancellation cover.

Complaints

Write to [changes@travelundercost.com](mailto:changes@travelundercost.com) and say plainly what went wrong. It gets an answer in writing from this desk inside five working days. No sentence on this page trims a right given to you by West Virginia law or by federal law.