My wife and I live in Oregon, and booked a trip through Travelocity to go to Southern California to attend my nephew's wedding on Mothers Day weekend (May 9-12). The trip included round trip airline on Alaska, car rental and 3 nights hotel stay. We chose the airline, hotel and car company. This was not a prefab Travelocity package.
Unfortunately, my wife's brother died suddenly on April 22nd, after we made these travel plans. His family decided on April 23rd to have a delayed memorial for him on May 7th. I contacted Travelocity on April 24th to try to change the trip to fly down to California two days earlier.
I finally got through to a "customer service" representative after being shuffled through 2 other people. I explained the situation, and that I hoped to change the Southbound flight to May 7th, and to fly into a different Southern California airport (Ontario rather than Santa Ana as originally scheduled). I indicated that I expected there would be a change fee with the airline, and a dropoff fee with the car rental.
At this point, I was told that the destination airport couldn't be changed. I was willing to accept this and drive the 1 1/2 hours from Santa Ana to San Bernardino.
Next I was told that since this was a "package", I would also have to extend the Orange County hotel stay for two days. I explained that we wouldn't even be in Orange County for those days, but would be staying with my wife's family. The extra cost was nearly $400, mostly wasted. I asked about cancelling the hotel altogether, but they wouldn't do this without cancelling the whole trip.
Well, as it is Mothers Day weekend, rebooking the return trip was not an option, as I checked on the Alaska website. I went ahead and accepted the extra days.
Since then, I have had an ongoing email conversation with Travelocity, but they appear to be adamant that they can't shorten the hotel stay or give any refund for a future hotel stay that is not wanted and will not be used. They did offer a $100 discount on a future Travelocity package.
I guess the moral of the story is: Don't use Travelocity if there is a possibility that someone may die.
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