Sunday, February 28, 2010

This is why I usually fly AirTran.

I will be traveling next week and a situation arose where I have to change my flight time. So today I called the airline, who shall remain nameless...
and asked them for their help in this situation. I ended up talking to a lovely, cheerful man who sounded positively ENTHUSED about life and his job. He ended up telling me in a depressing monotone that he'd be glad to change my flight to one leaving 4 hours later, now could I just give him my credit card information so he could charge me $350?

WELL my little harpoon of happiness, how do I put this nicely? HELL NO.

I could get an ENTIRE round-trip ticket for that price- they must have put him through the crazy training when he was hired. I'm sure there was another option so I asked him in my shrill panicking voice to please figure something else out.

Oh, I wanted another option besides paying almost $400? I guess I could just call 3 hours before the flight I wanted to take and they'd put me on that one if there was room for $50.
Fabulous! Now we're getting somewhere! But this kind of sounded too good to be true so I made sure to ask some questions to make sure I had it right. And this is when the representative I was talking to decided to start acting like I was wire-tapping the conversation for the FBI or something.

Me: AWESOME- I'm not sure WHY you went the $350 route when this option is clearly so much better but whatever. Thank you! Can I have your name and representative number just in case I call later and something gets confused?

A-hole: No.

Me: Ummm okay? But what if there was somehow a mistake and whoever I talk to that day doesn't believe me. If I don't show up for my flight doesn't that mean I'll be forfeiting my ENTIRE ticket?

A-hole: No. You'll be fine. Just call 3 hours before the second flight.

Me: Yeah? That seems weird. I'd really feel better if you just gave me your name.

A-hole: Fine. It's Chase*

Me: That's it? Do you come with a full set- like a first or last name? Or a customer service number or something you can give me?

A-hole: No I don't feel comfortable with that.

Me: Look, I'm not trying to date you, I just want your name. I'm supposed to just call a huge multi-million airline and be like, "Yeah well that one Chase in your ENTIRE COMPANY said it was cool to switch flights. You guys know the guy I'm talking about right?"

A-hole: Yeah.

So I asked to talk to his supervisor and Mr. A-hole Chase of Idiot County, Georgia connected me to his genuinely nice supervisor and GUESS WHAT? It turns out, he was wrong. If I had gone and followed his stellar advice, I would have totally missed my first flight and then been marked as a no-show. Which means I would have had NO TICKET and been forced to cry in the middle of the airport. Though now that I think about it, this may not have turned out terrible since there are tons of cute army guys swarming the Atlanta airport, and I can only imagine a crying girl would have gotten attention from at least a couple of them. So I might have snagged a date or two from this hypothetical situation. But hey, he doesn't know that... so back to being annoyed!

I understand people make mistakes, so normally I would cut this guy some slack. However I'm pretty sure that in this instance, he pulled this information out of his ass while playing minesweeper and was just too lazy to actually check if the information he was feeding me was true or not. And I'm ALSO pretty sure that it is oh I don't know... HIS JOB TO GIVE ME CORRECT INFORMATION. In the end it all turned out okay because his lovely supervisor fixed things for me and I still have time to make up a reason to cry.



*not his real name. Since he was so paranoid about giving ME his info (and when I had just rattled off my address and phone number too??) I can't imagine how his head would explode if I put it on the internet.

1 comment:

  1. I HATE when this happens!!!
    I had a recent mess happen with my insurance company where they failed to add my sons new car--this is in SEPTEMBER. They had the information, but didn't complete processing it. I never got a card with his car info on it..so I called. Twice. Both times I was told, by two diff people, that it was fine-he's on my policy, no worries.
    5 months later, I get new cards...still no car listed for my son. I call back AGAIN - oops, nope, his car has no insurance. For FIVE months my teenager has been driving with no real insurance (they assured me they would have covered it if he had an accident, but why would I believe that).

    I just want people to do their job when I call them. I shouldn't have to do it for them!!

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