2020 Was Going To Be My Year

I'm not a high school senior or a college senior, COVID-19 didn’t take away my prom, senior year or graduation. I feel so grateful for that. In January I turned 25 years old, I had a mid-life crisis where I thought about all the things that I haven't done and the things I hadn’t experienced. I made myself a promise then that I was going to make this year, a year of experience.

It had been going well, so I bought tickets to my favorite Irish folk group Celtic Woman in March. The concert was so much fun! I thought it was the start of my year of experiences. Next, I bought tickets to Anastasia the play, a Halsey concert in June, my best friend and I had planned a vacation to New York together (neither of us had ever been before) and lastly I booked a trip to London, England and Paris, France.

However, the sudden skyrocket of cases of COVID-19 in the USA put a screeching halt to the country. Which is a good thing. The idea for there to be any possibility for less loss of life and to make sure that the hospitals are not having too much stain that they cannot handle. It is the best thing to have closed schools and canceled public gatherings in order to try and stop the spread. Unfortunitly that doesn't stop the disappointment of having to miss out on the things I, and a lot of other people, were looking forward to.

The down hill for me started when I got an email saying that the Anastasia play was going to be rescheduled. I really wanted to see it, although the organizer did not have a date in mind for the play and I was afraid to commit to a new date that had not been decided on yet. So I felt forced to ask for a refund. This was the first thing to get cancelled, but it certainly was not the last.

As I mentioned before, my best friend and I had planned a trip to New York in April. We had started planning this trip in December. We booked our Airbnb months out, I thought we were being smart about getting everything booked and set up ahead of time so that when April was here there wouldn’t be anything to worry about. I sure was wrong.

When COVID-19 first hit the news, I wasn't worried about it. I really didn't think that it would impact anything, let alone shut down the country like it has. In early March the Anastasia play had been canceled but my friend noticed that plane tickets had gotten so cheap. I still thought that there was no way that we weren’t going to be able to go to New York, so we bought two roundtrip tickets to New York for $60 each. Not even a week after we booked those flights, New York was starting to quarantine certain areas and was closing everything from broadway to restaurants. We decided that it was best to go ahead and cancel the trip in order to not place ourselves or our families in danger of contracting COVID-19.

Unfortunatly, there were a couple of problems with cancelling this trip. The airline refused to give us a refund because they said that the tickets we bought were nonrefundable and that it didn't matter that the cancellation was COVID-19 related, thankfully it was only $60 not $2,200 which has happened to me before (with the same airline).

That was disappointing, however getting our money back from AirBNB was much more difficult. Airbnb released a statement that any booking made before March and with an arrival date of April 14th or earlier would get a complete full refund due to COVID-19. So I went into my app and canceled my reservation. As soon as I did that, I got an email stating that I would be getting a full refund of $160.63, and that it could take 10 days to see the refund reflected in my account.

There was nothing in the email that said I needed to do anything further to get my refund. I waited the 10 business days before I checked my paypal to see if the refund was there, it wasn’t. I messaged their support on the Airbnb App, I got a reply from a bot that told me a representative would get back with me in 24 hours. I didn’t get a response for 48 hours. I messaged them again asking for an update, the bot again responded by saying that COVID-19 had made their response time go up and that if it was an urgent issue I should call their support line.

When I called their support line I was on hold waiting for a representative for over an hour. Once I was finally talking to a rep he said that my account didn't have a refund issued on it, but he said that he would push one through anyway. I waited another ten days and still there was no refund. So I went into my account and requested a refund from the host. The hosts refund guidelines would only let me ask for a refund of $130 instead of the whole amount.

A couple days later I got a message from an Airbnb representative, they said that they would process the refund of $130 and that they would now be closing the support ticket. The next day I got the $130 refund. I messaged the rep again asking about the other $30 that I was told I would get refunded as well but got no answer as the rep had already closed the ticket. I messaged them again and was then finally given the left over refund of $30.

So far this was the biggest cancelation that really upset me. My best friend and I had planned this for months, it was going to be her first vacation and neither of us had ever been to New York before, I was really looking forward to it. I do really hope we get another chance to go and have this experience together.

The Halsey concert isn't until June, however I am worried that it will get canceled as well because the stay at home orders will most likely be extended again. Already some states have extended it to June 10th. If NC gets extended to that date, the convert will have to be canceled or rescheduled. I've only recently come to really love Halsey but I am super excited to see her in concert. I really hope that the concert goes ahead but at this moment I'm not holding my breath.

The last thing I had planned for this year was an eight day trip to Europe. I booked it with EF Ultimate for a trip to London and Paris. I had also booked this trip month’s in advance and have been making payments on it for a while. I hope that by October the country has been able to reopen safety and we have all returned to some kind of normal.

Even if COVID-19 is completely gone and international travel is up and going, since I was laid off due to this pandemic, I'm not even sure if I'll be able to keep making the payments in order to go in October. I am thinking of changing the book date to either January, as a 26th birthday gift to myself or August to go during the warm season. I'm leaning more toward August, which would make the payments much lower.

While this pandemic is devastating and people have lost their lives, I do not believe that it is wrong for me and others to be upset by the change in the plans that we had made. We should comfort each other in all that we suffer, not compare it.