Grr. When Best Laid Plans Go Awry

Okay, here's the deal.

I was asked to make flight reservations for a trip that's already been rescheduled once. That trip got cancelled in the first twenty-four hours, so we didn't have to pay for the tickets. That was the rant I had a few weeks ago about United. An airline I will never, ever fly.

This time, I decided to try American. Which, by the way, after this experience I will probably never fly. We'll see (the jury's out having a smoke).

The reservation process was easy and painless. I got all three seats reserved on all four legs with no muss, no fuss, no bother. Suspecting this trip might also get canceled, I thought I would be clever and buy insurance on the tickets. That way, 'when' the trip got cancelled, for the nominal fee of $76 plus change, we could get a refund on the bulk of the price of the tickets.

W-R-O-N-G!!! (Insert favorite swear words here) It's just like every other insurance policy you buy.

You pay for it - in this case one time - and, when you need to use it, you might just as well have flushed your money down the toilet. It would be better used.

Okay - so these are three tickets. It's almost $1,300. But I ask you: how many insurance policies are bought on each flight each and every day? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

The chart below is from a website I found when I Googled "us domestic airline capacity"

http://centreforaviation.com/analysis/the-big-3-us-airlines-american-delta-and-united-increase-3q2015-profits-despite-lower-unit-revenue-245655

United Airlines global top 10 hubs/bases/stations by seats: 21-Sep-2015 to 27-Sep-2015

Source: CAPA - Centre for Aviation and OAG

Look at this. ORD = Chicago O'Hare. 770,282 seats in one - just ONE eight day, non-holiday period.

Okay - that's United. But I'm willing to wager American isn't far behind. Let's say for the sake of discussion, they sell "only" 500,000 seats per eight day period through O'Hare. And I wanted to insure three of those seats - just three. Less than 0.0003% of the seats sold in that eight day period.

Oh! My! Gawd! Yeah - those seats are going to put a HUGE dent in American's profits, aren't they? As if they won't be resold in a quarter of a heartbeat. Given that - why doesn't the airline just not pay Allianz, the insurer, the fees (probably huge) they pay Allianz for the insurance policies. Why not just charge, say... $75 per ticket to allow refundability?

No. When I checked, the refundable tickets were close to twice as expensive - so it's almost an 100% upcharge for refundable tickets through the airline.

To me, that makes zero sense. If the profit margins on each seat are so minimal, why stay in business at all? Why not either: restructure through bankruptcy to get rid of the horrendous union contracts, remodel your business so it runs more efficiently, and keep it private! Then you don't have stockholders and unions holding your passengers at virtual gunpoint.

Or, if you don't want to go that route, have your professional analysts that you already have on staff perform an analysis on the actual cost per seat per route per flight and the actual average number of cancelled / unused tickets per period - twenty-four hour, weekly, monthly, quarterly - and then have them do an analysis of the real cost to your business.

You know why that will happen at about the same time the herd of pigs takes off from O'Hare? Because those things are "hard" (they're not, really. Painful in the short-term, perhaps, but not hard.)

So here's the flip side. I bought the seats. We paid for them with a credit card. American got it's money - and I got the shaft. Actually, I didn't personally, but I have to deal with the shaft that our company will get as a result of the fact that I, as about 99.9999% of the people who buy such insurance, didn't read the fine print.

After all - if you do read the multitude of pages of fine print and you don't like what you're reading, what are you going to do about it? Really? Are you going to try to negotiate? Are you going to not do what you thought would be a good idea? No. Probably not. So, like that 99.9999% of other people I did not read the fine print because it would make no difference in this case.

Now, it falls to me to try to collect the money that paid for three seats that won't be used by three colleagues, but may well be resold and used by others - double profit for the airline, don't you see?

After all, if that flight has too many people wanting to fly on it - and two of the legs are between San Francisco and Chicago and back - and some of those people line up on 'stand-by' and three people who have reservations don't show and check-in before the designated time, the airline can sell those seats to those stand-by passengers.

To say this insurance scam perpetrated by the airlines pisses me off understates the irritation I feel to no small degree.

Plans change. Stuff comes up that interferes with the best-laid plans. But to hold a customer over a barrel and pick their pocket is just plain wrong. And that's what I feel is being done now.

Because the airline and their third-party insurer won't just cancel the tickets so the seats can be resold to other passengers, those seats may well remain empty. In exchange, I get the thrill and pleasure of fighting with an insurance company to recover nearly $1300 that could easily have been credited back to the card against which it was charged.

And, for clarity, I tried to cancel these tickets on Friday afternoon - 72-hours before the flight. It's not like a last minute cancellation or no show.

Given that, why can't the airlines do as most other businesses do?

At the hotel, it's a twenty-four hour notice.
At the car rental agency, they didn't seem to care one way or another, but thanked me for my call.
At my doctor's office which, I realize is a complete non-sequitur in this diatribe, it's a twenty-four hour notice.

Why can't the airlines have the same kind of policy? How about:

If booked a minimum of ten days in advance and if the tickets are cancelled within twenty-four hours of booking, the cancellation is made, no charge.

If the twenty-four hours lapse, but you call to cancel three days - seventy-two hours - in advance, there's a fee of $75 per seat. The airline has three more seats on its flight and can resell them, plus snap up the $75 cancellation charge.

If you wait until the last minute and cancel, sorry bud, you're SOL unless you bought the insurance and have the time, energy and willingness to fight with the insurer to recover your money.

Does that sound unreasonable?

Dang. I'm grumpy.

And I have to take part of my Saturday to call the airline and clarify something the agent said yesterday. These tickets might be reusable later on, within one year, with an up-charge. I need to find out what that up-charge is. Was it a flat $200 - or $60-something per seat, which would probably make sense to take advantage of since the new discussion is to make this trip in January - or was it $200 per ticket, which makes my fight with the insurance agency, assuming I'm successful with the claim, look a bit more cost-effective.

I don't know. All I do know is that I'm grumpy. So, I'm going to grump away here and start looking forward to NaNoWriMo which starts tomorrow.

Have a pain-free day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Airline Heaven?

So in yesterday's post I ranted and bitched and moaned about how impossible United Airlines was to deal with to make reservations, right?

Well guess what - it seems they would rather not have you do business with them. After all, if you don't fly with them, they don't have to go to all that trouble of getting a plane to the gate, and cleaning, and all that other nuisance stuff.

I got into work yesterday. About thirty minutes later the woman who asked me to make the reservations said things had changed. There's a new call on her time so she can't make the trip after all. She was very apologetic, because she had heard about my nightmare on Thursday, but I said, honestly, 'don't worry about it'. After all, it is part of my job, one of the reasons it's called 'work'. So I will do whatever it takes.

Because the tickets were non-refundable, that was the first call I made, to make sure I was in the twenty-four hour window. What a world of difference between trying to make the reservations and cancelling them!

On Thursday, three flight reservations literally took all afternoon. From about 1:30 pm local time to just before 5:00 pm local time. Phone calls, waiting on hold - it was a nightmare.

Today, I called the 800 number. At the end of it I was dazed and confused. What is wrong with this picture?

I called. I told the automated system I wanted to cancel. The hardest part was getting the ruddy thing to recognize the name of the passengers. I got through that, after a bit of a fight. From there, the entire rest of the process took about ten minutes. Only ten minutes to cancel v. almost four hours to make.

What does that say about United Airlines? I'll let you mull that over.

Hotel was a breeze. Went online to the reservation portal and wham-bam-thank-ya ma'am I was done. All three took less than five minutes, and I got immediate e-mail confirmation that the rooms have been canceled.

Called the rental car company. I ended up in India speaking to a man whose accent was so thick I could hardly understand him. I asked him to repeat his name twice but no joy. Whatever. He assured me the reservation is cancelled and since I didn't use a credit card to hold it, it doesn't really matter, anyway. It was a courtesy. That one took about five minutes.

So, start to finish, the hotel and the car agency took a total of about twenty minutes to reserve and cancel - it was easy as could be.

Now, back to United. What is it with them? They make it almost impossible to make reservations but happily cancel the ones you make? Where is the profit in that?

I'm debating sending a note to their SVP of Customers, just to let her know how messed up their system is. Then again, do I think she'll care? Nah, probably not.

And I've decided that when the time comes for my bucket trip, I am not going to fly any of the domestic airlines. From SFO I can easily take one of the other airlines - Lufthansa, Swiss Air, Air France, British Airways, Virgin. Any one of those has got to be better than United.

Oh - and as for the reason why making flight reservations is just next door to impossible and why cancelling is the easiest thing since falling? My hubby posits that it's because there are so many people lining up to make flights that the airlines don't care about incoming passengers. After all, if the flight isn't sold out or close to being sold out, they'll just cancel it. And I think that might be right...

Hope your flying time is easy and safe!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Airline HELL

Okay. I thought about this for a couple of hours yesterday and slept on it, but I'm still so ticked off I can't help myself.

Yesterday I was asked to make travel reservations for three colleagues. All they want to do is fly from San Francisco, California to a location in the Eastern third of the country. Nothing but state borders involved. No customs, nothing beyond ordinary domestic travel.

Simple, right? HAH!

I get the hotel rooms reserved - piece of cake. No problem with the car rental, either. All that's left is the flight.

Okay. I fiddle around and check American Airlines. Only two seats were available on the date and at the time requested for this destination. I check Kayak and a couple of other sites and the best "fit" appears to be United.

I check the United website. Doesn't look complicated or like anything resembling rocket science, so I get started.

I find the flight that I had seen - departure time at about the same time as the American flight. Cool! Seats are available and everything. I find a return flight. Great! Seats are available there, too.

Get confirmation that the change in airline is okay and go online to book the seats. This is as soon as I get back from lunch at about one o'clock.

All is well, right? So I start making the online reservation. I get through the first screen where I pick the flight. I pick the seats for all four legs. I get to the payment information. I enter all of that - so far I'm into this project by about an hour - just for one reservation. I think I've got the reservation made, but I never get an e-mail confirmation.

Hmm. Okay. Do I try again, and possibly double-book? Or do I go to the next reservation? I decide to go to the next reservation and see if the first one will pop up in my e-mail.

I pick the flight - out and back. I pick the seats for all four legs. I enter the passenger information, payment information and... Right in the middle of it, I get a "You have been Redirected" message.  What!?? Redirected to where? For what reason?

I don't know - I haven't got a clue and the website isn't telling me a thing. So - do I start over and hope that I'm not double booking this one, too?

No. I decide it's best to play it safe and call United.

Oh. My. Effing. GAWD!!!

It takes an act of God to get to an agent.

No. I don't want to talk to the automated system. No! I really don't want to talk to the automated system. NO! DAMMIT! I want to talk to a person - hopefully someone with a brain!

Get through that, then I'm warned that it's going to be a twenty-plus minute wait. I'm both irritated and persistent, so I stay on "rot" listening to their music (thank goodness they're not trying to sell me on how wunnerful United Airlines is at this point).  So I wait.

Finally, at twenty-two minutes I get to talk to Rocky.

I explain my problem, including the problem with the website. He says, 'No, the first reservation wasn't booked. Let me transfer you to our other department so you won't be dinged $35 per passenger for talking to me.'

Okay - so I am trying really REALLY REALLY hard to spend nearly $2,000 with this company and this is their customer service?

Needless to say, I am not impressed. But, he offers to transfer me, I accept and after about fifteen seconds of more music, nothing. I mean I could have been in deep space for all I could hear. Still, I wait because I am determined. Five minutes... ten... I give up. I call back.

I re-wrestle with the automated system that doesn't believe me when I say 'Agent' with increasing force.

It finally agrees to allow me to speak to a representative.

By this time I am about to come unglued. Especially when I hear the cheerful automated voice say words to the effect of, "Your wait time will be between fifteen and twenty minutes". So - I've already spent over an hour-and-a-half on this exercise, plus the thirty minutes trying to talk to someone and then waiting while they cut off my call. Another five minutes mud wrestling with the damned automated system and... I get to wait some more?

This is NOT how a successful company deals with its customers who just want to spend their money with them. Or is it?

Gritting my teeth I warn the very nice lady on the other end of the phone that I'm livid and ask her pardon for being short with her, and then I outline my tale of woe. She listens, as she's trained to do. She doesn't get upset - she even offers to waive the $35 per person 'talk-to-me-fee'. Professional. Not delightful. Not pleasant from my perspective at this point, but she was professional.

Unfortunately, the tickets are non-refundable unlike on the website that didn't work.

I don't care. At this point I really do not care. I book the damned tickets which now cost, on top of the airfare, better than three hours of my time. Really?!???

The saying used to be, 'Is this any way to run a railroad?' That's out of date. Now I think the question is: 'Is this any way to run an airline?' Apparently so because the airlines are still in business, still making money.

Personally, after my experience today, I cannot help but wonder how.

Pain, agony and frustration trying to spend money.

Then my colleagues will get to the airport, have to strip off every piece of metal they are carrying. Subject their bags to being x-rayed, and stand with their hands in the air - in the international sign of surrender (as in police scenarios) - so they can have the privilege of being shoved into a space smaller than California allows chickens to occupy.

Really?

All I can do is shake my head and wonder.

At least it isn't me. Yet. Maybe that year-long bucket trip I dream of is not worth the nightmare of booking flight reservations. I wonder if there is a Cunard Liner still plying the Atlantic...

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories