[Travel]
[travel] The skies, they are not so friendly
Such a day. Oy. In Omaha now, working the Day Jobbe from the head office, but a journey it was.
When Potlatch Foolscap yesterday evening, I went to double check my departure time and print my boarding pass, and my flight had disappeared from my account on the United Airlines Web site. Two hours of phone calling ensued. Airline reservations. Travel agent. Airline customer service. Airline Internet support. Travel agent. Airline customer service. Lather, rinse, repeat, beat with sticks.
The long and the short of it is that due to a recent TSA rule change, United Airlines did something in their database that trimmed the “Jr” off my full name, which (as anyone who has a book of mine can see on the copyright page) is “Joseph E. Lake, Jr.” So a ticket issued in that name, which matches my photo ID and my frequent flyer card, is no longer valid for my frequent flyer account in the United Airlines system. This, they have explained to me twice, is because I “must have changed my name in the system.”
Um, no.
So far, this remains unresolved. (Though I did get on my flight.) I’ve been told repeatedly nothing can be done, that this is my problem. I have pointed out repeatedly that I didn’t create this problem and I have no power to fix it. So far, the airline remains unimpressed with my position.
United Airlines’ customer service philosophy can best be described as “poisoning the well.” In ten years as a high status frequent flyer on American Airlines, I never had as much trouble as I’ve had since switching to United last spring. I’m a hairsbreadth away from switching back to American. United has better planes, and better routes (at least for my needs), but their customer service is so abysmal it’s not worth the freaking trouble.
So I get to Omaha, and lo and behold the Hertz Gold counter, which is designed to be a fast transaction where you pick up the keys to your waiting, reserved car, is being used as a walk-up booking service by the two people in line in front of me. The clerk is happy to help. There is no other clerk. There is an entire counter full of clerks just inside the airport whose job it is to do this, but no, this is not good enough for the people in front of me, who have gone rather out of their way to tie up what is supposed to be the express lane. This is the equivalent of going through the 12 item lane at the supermarket with $250 worth of produce in your cart while the adjacent full service lanes are open. So I spend ten minutes waiting to spend fifteen seconds retrieving the keys with my name on them I can see over the clerk’s shoulder.
Then I get out on the highway, and I-680 is closed down due to what I later learn is a fertilizer spill. Meanwhile, I have to keep cycling my iPhone in and out of airplane mode to reboot the radio because the AT&T voice and data network keeps locking up and going into la-la land. I know AT&T likes to say they have the least dropped calls, but I’m pretty sure that’s because their network doesn’t seem to be able to connect the damned calls in the first place.
However, having broken the air travel, car rental, Interstate highway and cellular telephone infrastructures with the mighty powers of my mind, I managed to get through the rest of the day without significant further mishap, culminating in a nice dinner with
Tomorrow, more work.
Posted: 7:56 pm Mon September 28 2009 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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Amy Sisson
September 28th, 2009 at 10:31 pmJay, are you familiar with consumerist.com? This sounds like a prime situation for one of their patented EECBs (executive e-mail carpet bomb). Consumerist.com can probably get you the e-mail addresses of United execs.
Good luck!
Cora
September 29th, 2009 at 4:04 pmYears ago, a United pilot messed up announcing the local time upon landing in Detroit, which led me to believe that we’d crossed the time zone border when we really hadn’t. And since Detroit airport was (probably still is) a crumbling dump at the time with barely a functioning screen or clock, let alone a public address system that actually worked, I missed my connecting flight and was stranded for several hours.
There is a reason I avoid US airlines whenever possible, because the service quality is lower than with European or Asian airlines. Unfortunately, one cannot avoid US airlines for domestic connections.
However, unlike you I got lucky with rental cars today and ended up with a surprise convertible. Okay, so it was just a Volkswagen Eos, i.e. not very cool, and the weather was too cold and rainy for driving with the top down. Still, surprise convertible at no extra cost.
Jay
September 29th, 2009 at 4:21 pmMmm. Convertible. My Genre car is a ragtop. Glad your luck was better than mine this time.
Jay Lake: [travel] The irony, she is drop forged and highly polished
October 8th, 2009 at 3:58 pm[...] indicated she’d followed through on my travelfail issues of last week (documented here: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]), and very politely discussed the resolution with me, after having been unable to [...]