Those of you that read my Christmas travel article know that I had no luck at making it to Cincinnati to see my family. After several egregiously rude interactions with Continental Airlines (rude on their part, that is!), I decided to dispute the charges on my credit card. About four months later this story continues.
First, allow me to recount the history of this debacle. I purchased round-trip travel to Cincinnati to leave San Jose on December 23 and return several days later. The night before my expected travel, a storm appeared in the midwest and a Continental representative and I agreed that I’d have a better chance of getting to Cinci on Friday (Dec. 24) than Thursday. She changed my reservations and I slept in late on my day off.
On Friday, Dec. 24 I boarded a Continental plane to Houston (the location of my one connection) with hopes of being in Cinci in time for a Skyline Chili dinner. Upon arriving at IAH, I found out that all Comair flights — Comair was operating the second leg of my day’s travel — had been cancelled due to a computer glitch. After hours of iteratively begging Continental and Delta (Comair’s owners) to get me somewhere I gave up and headed back to San Jose.
I was shocked to hear from an impertinent Continental employee that their inability to get me to my destination was just tough luck. Instead, for my $550, they offered me a voucher. That is, when you pay hundreds of dollars to travel Continental Airlines all that this buys you is the ability to go somewhere, some day. They don’t in any way mean to imply that they’ll get you to a certain city in any time frame at all.
It took me about two months to convince the bank that operates my Visa that this wasn’t just. My Visa holder, First Bank (now called Chase), wanted to refund me half the value of one ticket. They believed that since I did receive half the travel (that is, flying to Houston and back in one day) I should pay half of the value of the ticket. I told the Visa rep. that a purchased ticket to Hawaii isn’t priced as double the price of being dumped in the Pacific Ocean. That is, the value of being dumped in the ocean is zero dollars. Arrangements should either get you to your destination or be counted as having done nothing at all and being worth nothing.
I’m going to digress for one paragraph and point out that I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the plight of airlines. In many cases they are at the mercy of the weather and considerably inconvenienced by seemingly arbitrary FAA-based security policies and routing pressures brought upon by interation with other airlines. However, even if they had offered to get me to Cincinnati at any time in a multi-day window, I would have been happy. They were unable to provide this service, so I feel that they should not be taking my money.
Now, back to the story. After many voice and snail mail conversations with my Visa, they agreed to refuse payment to Continental for the entire amount of the ticket. Today, Friday April 15, I received notice from Continental of said refusal. Curiously enough, these assholes built this missive around one key point: that I used two of the four coupons (travel legs, that is) that I purchased. Since I reject the entire premise of this nail biting piece of shit, I cannot possibly respond with the template they’ve provided.
So, on Monday I’ll return to the fray with this unscrupulous airline. I’m going to have to make all communication with them official, because I fear that we’re heading towards a choice between me paying the money and me ending up in court. And since the idea of providing even half of $550 to an airline for absolutely nothing at all is morally repugnant to me, I could be in for a whole lot of writing.
Lovely.
Here’s my fun travel story for the week. I was returning on business from Seattle to Tucson. My stopover was in Salt Lake City. The plane was about 1/2 hour late getting out of Seattle so I knew I was in jeopardy as my layover was only 45 minutes. We got to SLC 1/2 hour late as expected. I asked the Delta gate agent where the flight to Tucson was. He responded something like this: “E-10. You probably won’t make it but you better start running anyway.”
Me: “Can you call them and tell them I am on my way ?”
Him: “No. We really don’t do that.”
Me: “Can you get one of those carts that is always honking at me to give me a ride to E-10 so I can make my flight ?”
Him: “No. That’s not really what the carts are for. You can be the truck dude! Start running.” in a condescending tone.
What the fuck are the carts for ???????????????????
At that point I left and calmly walked to E-10. I’m not running through the goddamn airport with my laptop bag and suitcase. He was right. I didn’t make the flight. I told the lady working the gate what happened. She acted like she cared and that the agent’s responses were inappropriate. Maybe she did care. Her face was really scrunched up. I couldn’t tell. She gave me a voucher $15 for lunch.
I was supposed to leave at 12. The next flight left at 5 PM.
I’m not sure what’s better: Sitting in an airport or sitting in my cubicle which is what I would have done if I made the 12 PM flight. Anyway, I payed $9.95 (incidental expense on my report) for wi-fi access, had a gin and tonic, wrote some business related e-mail, and played Counter-Strike for 3 hrs.
The end.