I've flown Jetblue any number of times and had no problem. So it was startling that my return from San Diego was as much of a fiasco as it was, especially considering that I was lied to by virtually every Jetblue employee that I encountered.
I was slated to leave at Noon from San Diego, get into JFK at 8:30 PM and connect to an Orlando flight at 9:10 PM. I wasn't sanguine about the tight connection, but was assured when I made the reservation that their on-time record practically assured I'd make it.
So we sat on the runway at San Diego for a solid hour, and as I watched time erode, the flight attendant assured me that they'd hold the connecting flight.
Riiiiight.
Well, thanks to reroutes to take us around bad weather, we wound up flying waaaay out of our way and had to refuel in Buffalo. So the flight attendant comes up to me and tells me, at 10:10 PM, that JFK is way behind in its flights taking off, and the plane would very likely still be there. (Unbeknownst to me, the flight from JFK to Orlando had taken off at 10:05.)
So as we approached JFK at 11:10, the same stewardess comes to me and tells me apologetically that the chances were "very slim" that the connecting flight would still be there (since it had departed 65 minutes earlier, "very slim" was a generous assessment at best.) However, she assures me "if the plane is gone, we'll put you up in a hotel for the night."
Riiiiight.
"And there will be a gate agent right at the gate to give you all the information you'll need."
Riiiight.
So I get off the plane at 11:30 PM. No gate agent, no info. I'm told to go to the customer service desk. I'm waiting behind a guy going to Burlington, Vermont, who's told that his plane is about to leave but if he runs he can still catch it. Off he runs. They tell me about the already departed flight and book me on the 7:05 AM flight, telling me I have an aisle seat in the front of the plane. I'm supposed to then go down to the main office in baggage claim where I'll be sent to a hotel.
I pass the angry Vermont passenger who got to watch the door closed as he sprinted toward it. So he wasn't in much of a good mood either.
In the main office, they give me a piece of paper with a code number and tell me to go to a nearby hotel. "We've called ahead, your room will be all ready, and we'll be paying for it."
Riiiiight.
So I cab over to the hotel, my "Fantastic Four" t-shirt now soaked through from perspiration. I get there and the desk clerk has no idea what I'm talking about. Jetblue didn't call, they have no vouchers left with this hotel to comp passengers, and the hotel doesn't have any rooms available anyway. They're booked solid. Absolutely no rooms available.
As I'm standing there trying to figure out what to do, the desk clerk asks me if I've seen the FF film. Yes, I have. Is he a comics fan. "Huge fan," he says. I stick out my hand and say, "Hi. I'm Peter David. I wrote the Hulk for 12 years."
Ten minutes later, I have a room. So that was something. But I had to pay for it myself.
Later that morning I return to JFK where I discover that my ticket has transmuted from an aisle seat in the front to a middle seat in the back. By this point I'm too exhausted to care.
Jetblue will be hearing from me. Oh yes.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at July 20, 2005 04:56 PM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingI know all about problems with flights, specifically to and from San Diego, PAD. (Although my problems lie solely with US Airways...on that note, thank God Southwest is now flying in and out of Pittsburgh.) It's nice your credential as a comics writer apparently came in handy at the hotel.
Give Jetblue hell.
~G.
Sic Harlan on 'em, Peter - it's no worse than they deserve!
I had a problem with JetBlue recently too. Which was suprising because it was the ONLY airline I have flown the past 5 years or so...and was 100% happy with the airline. However on my previous flight, from JFK to Long Beach, CA...the air conditioning was not working at all...and the crew kept lying to us and telling us (listen to this bs) that the front part of the cabin was very cold, and so was the back. But we were in the middle, and the air is always warmer there. Warmer to the point of passing out? Not sure what the problem was...but did not appreciate them lying about it, when it was obvious something was very wrong.
Mike
Give 'em hell, Harr- er, Peter. I wouldn't settle for anything less than reimbursement on the hotel, since they promised you that you'd have a room.
Okay, okay, I know everyone has already said this...but....PLEASE DON'T LEAVE THE HULK! I was just watching a re-run of Angel today where (after Angel showing off his prodigious strength), Lila says "Yeah, yeah, hulk smash" and thought how nice it was to have the dialogue of Monsieur David in the Hulk's mouth nowadays. Ah, well, I'll look forward to reading all the other stuff, especially more New Frontier. Huzzah!
Well, Peter, it must be good to know that those 12 years on Hulk weren't for nothing. Even if you did have to pay for the room yourself.
Peter, sorry to hear about the nightmare flight/experience. As a frequent international traveler, I've had more than my share of bad experiences, and I've found that a polite but very no-nonsense letter almost always prompts a response, from several thousand frequent flyer miles at worst, to a free flight or first class upgrade. Generally speaking, I try to find out where the main customer service center is located and then call to find out who their customer relations manager is, so I know my letter will end up on the the desk of somebody who can handle it properly, as opposed to somebody who just picks up the phone, and frankly couldn't care less about my miserable experience. So a paper trail is infinitely preferable. Probably wouldn't hurt to mention how many hits you get on your website either, or how many readers you have. And please let all of us know when and if you get any results.
Google is a wonderful place to find information:
David Barger
President & COO
JetBlue Airways
When Enterprise Rent-A-Car jerked us around on a rental once, we couldn't get anywhere with the local or regional managers. Emailing corporate officers worked pretty well, though. I found Mr. Barger's email in just a few minutes.
If you consult Section 25, subsection B of the Jetblue Contract of Carriage, it says...
Carrier is not responsible and assumes no liability for failure to make connections on its own flights or the flights of any other airline.
"Carrier is not responsible and assumes no liability for failure to make connections on its own flights or the flights of any other airline."
Yes, I know that. Now I'd like you to look a little further and find me the section that reads as follows:
"Carrier reserves the right for its employees to lie repeatedly to its customers, making repeated promises that were then not kept. Carrier further reserves to the right to send customers to hotels under false pretenses after making repeated false claims that reservations would be made and bills for said rooms would be covered."
Let me know when you turn that up.
PAD
PAD - my father has made a VERY successful side...er, hobby, I guess... writing registered letters to various corporate presidents about terrible service or products. Requesting a return letter thing, the president will usually read it & respond.
I agree with you totally. But any compensation you get at this point is at the goodwill of the carrier. They could surprise you or disappoint you. In my own experience, I find what I call the high ground technique works best.
"I love Jetblue and fly it often. I understand about weather delays, but I feel that the situation was poorly handled and I would like this bill to be paid as promised."
I find that many complaint handlers are much more eager to give you free stuff if you don't put them on the defensive.
Many customer relations departments don't have outside lines or do not post them. If Jetblue won't transfer you to them, try faxing them or writing them at:
Customer Relations
Address: JetBlue Airways
P.O. Box 17435
Salt Lake City, UT 84117-7435
Fax: (801) 365-2440
As we welcome Peter back, may I ask to be welcomed on board the Peter David.net message boards??
(smile)
Posted by: David Shanske at July 21, 2005 12:19 AM
Many customer relations departments don't have outside lines or do not post them. If Jetblue won't transfer you to them, try faxing them or writing them at:
Customer Relations
Address: JetBlue Airways
etc.
Not likely to help; "Customer Relations" is usually another name for what nationally-syndicated radio consumer expert Clark Howard refers to as "Customer No-Service"; it's usually copmposed mainly of people whose job is to say "No."
The earlier comment regarding discovering the name/address of higher-ranking company officers (not necessarily the CEO; VP Sales is often a good bet) and contacting them -- in writing -- is generally the better way to go.
Otherwise, you get a fancy letter of apology and then find out someone left a PostIt stck to it that says "Send this guy the bug letter."
(I'll be glad to explain the reference in e-mail.)
Welcome aboard, Marc! If you fail to make your connection with any other thread here on PeterDavid.net, we'll have a boarding agent standing by at your ISP to make sure your data packets have a place to stay for the night. I personally guarantee it! :)
Did they lie to you, or did they say something that they thought was accurate, given the information that had at hand? Were they jerking you around, or did they truly think that everything was all set for you at the hotel?
The thing that always calms me in Travel Hell situations is the knowledge that the front-line soldiers in any service industry are rarely the source of my misery. It's almost always the fault of stupid corporate policies, or information systems that Just Don't Work. Getting mad at them or calling them liars is misdirected, wasted energy.
Did JetBlue get bought out by another company, or have a major corporate restructure recently? I ask because PAD's is the fifth tale in just over a week I've heard from customers who for years had nothing but praise for the airline, only to have some kind of recent experience ruin their satisfaction. It used to be nothing but rave reviews for them, but the last year or so I seem to hear nothing but horror stories from them.
What gives?
Peter,
Had a similarly horrible experience with Independence Air getting both to and from San Diego this year (although I yelled at enough people on the phone about it that I got my flight refunded *AND* a free roundtrip ticket anywhere else) - the odd thing is that I was walking to my gate I passed by the Jet Blue gate and noted to myself, "Hey, that's Peter David walking onto that plane with a large plush Snoopy doll poking out of his backpack" - I now know that seeing you and that Snoopy doll was some sort of BAD OMEN and that you are to be avoided at airports at all cost henceforth.
Also : the Spider-Man panel I went to was hilarious.
Kevin
My JetBlue story. The first time we were going to fly JB, we arrived at Dulles airport (Washington DC area) at like 4:30 in the morning for a 7:00 departure. Wife and I have 2 kids, both very excited for their plane trip. At check in, the clerks are very nice and let us know that we need to be sure to be at the gate for boarding at like 6:30 or something like that.
Long story short, but our plane was not there on time. No on even showed up at the gate to do the check in thing or announcements. Finally, I went to a different gate where JB people were and they informed us that our flight was going to be delayed. "Not to worry", they tell us, "your plane has already left New York." I'm a bit annoyed that we will need to wait a few hours, but my sainted wife was fully prepared for this - she had books and games for the young 'uns to be occupied with and so we began the wait.
2 hours later, I track a JB employee down again to find out how much longer the wait is going to be. "Quote a while" I'm told. A little more investigation and I discover that while our plane left from New York a few hours ago - its destination was Long Beach, California. So our plane had to leave NY, fly across the country, drop folks off, load up, and then fly all the way back to DC.
For our trouble, we were given $20 (5 per person) for food (while we waited 16 plus hours) and at a certain point they served snacks.
Not just JetBlue. We should be so lucky.
On three separate occasions, friends flying in from Japan had their luggage misplaced by NorthWest(ern?).
The worst such screwup by that airline occured to a ladyfriend who was flying in from Osaka via Detroit to here (Ottawa). She was expected in at mid afternoon on the Saturday. I get a call from her in Detroit saying the connection was delayed. She'd be here early evening. Early evening she calls again. Delay. She'll be arriving late evening. Then, later, calls to say the flight was cancelled and she had to find her own accomodations. NorthWest(ern?) wasn't paying.
Supposedly rescheduled to early afternoon the next day, I get a call saying it was again delayed until later in the afternoon. Then another call saying it was rescheduled for an 18:30 arrival here.
I live a ten-fifteen minute drive from the airport, so when the airport's web site was still showing an 18:30 arrival at 18:10, I headed out to be there when she arrived.
18:40, no sign of the plane having arrived. I enquired. "Oh, it has been delayed to 18:35," I was told. 1 - why didn't the arrivals' board reflect this? 2 - it's five minutes past that. Why isn't it listed as 'late'?
19:05, enquire further. No one has any idea of where the damn thing is.
19:25, people coming out of the customs' area. Long shot. I enquire from the arriving passengers whether it was the NorthWest(ern?) flight out of Detroit. It was. It had arrived twenty minutes prior. But still no sign of it on the board.
Then my friend came out of customs, informing me that her luggage hadn't made it.
See if _I_ ever make the mistake of flying NorthWest(ern?).
Thank you for this story. You know how you have a friend and he's seen this movie you're thinking of going to see so you call him up and he says: "DUDE! Do NOT waste your money or your time!" so you don't go to the movie. How about if PAD Readers all e-mail the HMFWIC of JetBlue and tell him: "DUDE! We heard waht you did to Peter. No way will we, members of our families or our friends EVER book a flight on your airline."?
How about that?
1.) NEVER, under any circumstances, accept anything less than a one-hour layover (Two is ideal, three is perfect. Thanks, Northwest Airlines!!!). Especially flying through Hell... Er, um, Atlanta-Hartsfield.*
2.) Has JetBlue been acquired by Delta, because Delta does this crap all the time.
3.) I'd still stick with JetBlue, just with the above caveats (esp. in Atlanta.) Why? They're not Delta Airlines.
4.) Delta sucks.
5.) Delta sucks.
6.) Delta massively sucks.
7.) There's a reason Delta is bankrupt. They suck.
*If I had to fly nonstop to Atlanta, I would demand a connecting flight in Charlotee to Savannah, then drive to Atlanta. WTF, it's only a five hour drive. Yeah, I hate the Atlanta airport that much. Too bad they didn't have an airport when Sherman went through. He could have torched that, too.
We flew on Frontier for the first time (as opposed to United or Ted) for our trip to San Diego.
The worst thing we had happen on our flight was that on the way to San Diego, our single suitcase luggage became damaged to the point where we will probably throw it away.
The hotel in San Diego was another matter. Never stay at the Holiday Inn Select on Hotel Circle. Never. You'll regret it. The entire staff has the collective intelligence of a grapefruit.
Getting help from *anybody* in that city was futile: transit workers, cops, the "red shirts" at the convention who need to be phasered.
Take, for example, Saturday morning. Standing in line before 9 am, having been told the exhibitors floor opens at 9am.
One of the red shirt squad leaders comes by and tells us the floor is opening at 10 or 10:30am. We're like "excuse me?" The guy asks us where we heard that they were opening at 9am.
We say "umm, how about that intercom message? 'The floor is opening at 9am. This is not a joke.'"
The guy walks off. The floor opens at 9:30am.
Or the transit worker who tells us that, no, we don't need to transfer from the Blue Line to Green Line at the Old Town Station, because the Blue Line will take us where we need to go.
No, it didn't, you dipshit. We had to transfer to the Green Line after all.
It makes you wonder if the people there even realize their mayor and two city councilmen have just resigned due to fraud and corruption.
Oh, and to top it off Sunday, while on a trolley, I got to see a body lying on the tracks surrounded by cops.
Never flew JetBlue, but ouch!
Had some excitement myself flying into San Diego on Thursday, but nothing like your fiasco. As we approached San Diego around noon local time, the pilot informed us that there was "low visibility" at the San Diego airport. And, since we couldn't land and were low on fuel, we would have to divert to Ontario.
"OK," I said to my wife, "He can't mean Ontario, Canada, so where the heck is the Ontario we're landing at?" She didn't know either, but another passenger within earshot said, "Oh, it's right outside of L.A."
So close, yet, so far away.
"Grrrrreat," I thought. "This is a minimum delay of two hours." And so it was. We landed at Ontario, parked out in the middle of nowhere, and waited for a fuel truck. After it arrived and popped in some fuel, we took off again. As we approached San Diego this time around, "low visibility" was apparently no longer an issue, and we landed without incident -- with nary a fog bank or haze cloud in sight.
As it turned out, I didn't miss any panels I planned on attending, but I'm sure the spate of "low visibility" diversions into San Diego that morning (and there were others) messed up the plans of some Con-bound folks.
Never flew on Jet Blue, but had a miserable experience on United once. We were supposed to fly from Harrisburg to Dulles and then to Denver. I arrived at Harrisburg International and was immediately told that the Dulles-Denver flight was cancelled due to weather, but they can put me on a commuter flight to Philadelphia where I could catch a late afternoon flight to Denver no problem.
So I get to Philly and wouldn't you know it? Everything heading west is now delayed or cancelled. People who were there for morning flights were still waiting by 7 or 8 in the evening. United told us that because it was a weather delay, they weren't responsible to put us up in a hotel, so at least they didn't lie to us like Jet Blue.
They did, however, promise to get us on a flight the next day, so we checked into a flea bag hotel (everything else was booked) for night. The soonest they could schedule us was another late afternoon flight, so after spending the day in Philly, we went back to the airport where we found (yep), everything going west was grounded again. This time, the counter lady told us that there was no way we getting to Denver today and tomorrow didn't look good either.
So, we rented a car and drove back to Harrisburg. United refused to reimburse us for the hotel or the car rental, but after much discussion, they at least refunded our tickets.
And that was the last time I DIDN'T fly United.
As we approached San Diego around noon local time, the pilot informed us that there was "low visibility" at the San Diego airport.
*chuckle* Yeah, it was interesting to wake up each morning to thick fog that lasted until about 11am.
Knowing about that kind of weather ahead of time, we flew Wednesday afternoon. :)
Never flew on Jet Blue, but had a miserable experience on United once.
When was this?
Rarely do we have weather that completely shuts down the airport, but our last trip to Vegas in March was a real experience getting out of Denver due to the weather that night. The experience of being on a plane waiting to be de-iced is one I never want to go through again.
Weeelll, as I work for a certain Federal agency that deals directly with airlines and airports and flights and all that, I *could* start giving out the standard lines about weather delays, backups, traffic, and blahdeefrickinblah that we've all heard at some point. Which is all well and good to know, but doesn't really make you or anyone else that's stuck somewhere in a plane/airport/hotel somewhere when you had planned to be somewhere else much more comfortable and pleasant. The unfortunate truth is, when it comes to weather delays, the airlines are legally required to do not much for you, short of trying to accomodate you on a later flight to get you to where you're supposed to go.
What makes PAD's case different is that the airline made an offer of compensation, and then failed to deliver. I'm not so surprised by the "misinformation" given on the plane: with the increase in occurences of angry passengers and "air-rage," airlines are even more sensitive to not doing anything that might provoke a passenger while on a plane. Telling everyone while you're cruising at 30,000' that they've all missed their connection runs the risk of someone blowing a gasket and endangering the entire plane. But handing out hotel vouchers to a fully booked hotel, that's pretty unexcuseable.
Recently all of my friends flying JetBlue out of JFK have been having problems..mainly delays. My friend flying back to San Diego was suppost to leave at 11:30 am ...they did not leave till 11:30pm SERIOUSLY. HE did get a free roundtrip out of it though.
Den-
NEVER fly out of Harrisburg International. Take the time to drive down to Baltimore-Washington International.
Former Harrisburg/Susquehanna Twnship resident,
Rich D.
Craig, on behalf of San Diego, I'd like to apologize for the idiot fom the transit system. The only excuse possible is that the Green Line is only about a week old, and a lot of people are still confused about exactly where it runs. Not much of an excuse for someone who bleeding well works with the fracking transit system, but...
As for the redshirts, well, Elite Security has the contract to provide all security personnel for the Convention Center (as well as Petco Park and a number of other venues). Elite pays minimum wage, with a small bump for sports events. You get what you pay for. Elite is a running gag at Con, and many other places in the city - if the Con Committee were legally permitted to provide their own security people, they would. As it stands, just rely on the redshirts there not knowing a damn thing about what's happening when, even if they offer the information before you ask. (Incidentally, that is something they ought to know by now - the Huckster Hall opens at 9:30 am on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday every year. I think the Thursday opening is later, but not sure, as I've never been there for htat.)
I don't apologize for the hotel people, because there's no excuse possible.
Complaint departments READ the letters? Really!?
I was in a Wendy's nearly 20 years ago. The service was exemplary, the restaurant was clean and constantly being bussed (even as busy as it was) so there was always a clean table ready, and the manager was talking with customers and their children, ensuring everything was okay.
I was so impressed by the place I filled out the comment card, gave it high marks, and instead of mailing it, made sure I handed it to the manager personally on my way out.
Two weeks later, I got a coupon for two free SuperBars, accompanied by a letter: "We apologize for the poor service you received..."
NEVER fly out of Harrisburg International. Take the time to drive down to Baltimore-Washington International.
When I'm flying on vacation, that's what I usually do. Unfortunately, this was a business trip for me (my wife paid for her own ticket) and we were required to fly out of HIA.
Den
Current Harrisburg/Swatara Township Resident
"Hi. I'm Peter David. I wrote the Hulk for 12 years"
You should have a flip wallet with a badge that says that.
I second what (only!) Andy said - there's a distinction between lying and being similarly in the dark and I'd put my bet on their simply being ignorant of reality. That's not an excuse for incompetence at the customer service desk or a reason for them not to make proper restitution to you now, but being angry over percieved slights when it's more likely the front line soldiers believed they were telling you the truth (they no more knew than you that the gate agent wasn't out there, for example) is just a waste of stomach lining.
During the four days I was there, only two bad things stuck out in my mind about the Elite guys. Both occurred on Friday, I believe.
First, there was an Elite guy out in front of the convention center, who, during the time it took me to walk a couple of hundred yards past him, must have blown his whistle 50 times and screamed, VERY irately, "Keep on the sidewalk." Frankly, I don't know how he could possibly keep that up all day.
Later, I was in line to get into Hall H, and a different guy was also yelling at everyone, VERY irately, "Turn your badges so the front is showing." He glared at me even though my badge was fine, and I glared right back at him. Later, everyone in line was saying stuff to each other like, "Geez! What's HIS problem?"
Other than those two incidents, the Elite guys seemed to just be doing their jobs and were a transparent part of the convention -- which is as it should be, I think.
"The unfortunate truth is, when it comes to weather delays, the airlines are legally required to do not much for you, short of trying to accomodate you on a later flight to get you to where you're supposed to go."
Maybe, but is it just me or were there significantly fewer problems before airline de-regulation?
"Hi. I'm Peter David. I wrote the Hulk for 12 years"
>You should have a flip wallet with a badge that says that.
You'd probably have better luck with said attendents if the badge read "I'm Peter David. I wrestled the Hulk and held my own."
Granted, they get overwhelmed by submissions, but I've always found it satisfying (if not all the time effective) to write to the ombudsman of a travel magazine like National Geographic Travel after you've exhausted your complaint options to the company. They sometimes tend to pick stories that have an unusual tone or twist to them, and PAD getting a hotel room because of his work in the comics field is a natural.
(Apologies if this is a duplicate post. Weird Safari-browser-related stuff goin' on today with my Internet.)
"Maybe, but is it just me or were there significantly fewer problems before airline de-regulation?"
There were also a ton fewer flights, to a ton fewer places. The only reason we have congestion problems today is because of competition: the skies are crowded, and just like a busy highway, add in even a small amount of bad weather, and delays start piling up. We could either go back to a heavily regulated industry, which really wouldn't be all that bad, but can never happen now that so many private investors are into the airlines. The only other solution is to build bigger airports with more runways. Like adding lanes to the crowded highway.
Craig, on behalf of San Diego, I'd like to apologize
Hey, it's not your fault. All in all, the people (ie, not cops, transit workers, or security people) around the city were very friendly and helpful, especially when we're sitting on a trolly wondering where the hell the thing is going. :)
As for Elite, yes, I can see why they are a running gag. They're a pretty pathetic lot. :)
I have no idea if we'll go to Comic-Con again though. It was fun to meet lots of people I chat with online and authors and stuff, but the chaos of it all is hard to take in.
That, and after a few decades of this, you'd think the Comic-Con guys could get their schedule out a little sooner than a week before the convention.
I don't fly as often as I used to, so I guess I haven't been exposed to as many problems (our trip to Vegas and back was painless) but what's the deal with airlines now charging for their crummy food? Like I want to pay $10 for stuff that'll make me sick! Has the food gone up in quality to make up for the massive charge? Of course not.
That's why I like Southwest. They forgo airline food altogether and just give you a big box of snacks for free.
Food? Are there any airlines that serve a real meal at all anymore? Was there ever a time when the quality was good?
BTW, I like to fly Southwest, too. They have good service at a reasonable price. Most other airlines that I have flown on generally treat their passengers like annoying talking cargo.
And then there's the time my mother was flying back from Maine, where my sister lives. She was flying USAirways from Portland, ME, to BWI with a connection in Philadelphia. I was supposed to come pick her up at BWI, which is about five minutes from her house and maybe ten from mine.
I showed up at the appointed arrival time and she wasn't there, and her flight from Philly didn't appear on the board.
I checked around, and no one knew anything. No one could tell me anything. I wandered around the terminal for a while (this was pre-9/11, so you could get farther in than baggage claim without a boarding pass), talked to various USAir employees and couldn't get any information. So I decided to take the extreme step of going home and calling USAir from my house. That was how I found out that the connecting flight had been cancelled, and the passengers put on a bus to BWI from Philadelphia. I suggested that it might have been nice to tell someone at BWI about this, so passengers' family members wouldn't be wondering if their relatives were being scraped off a runway somewhere and it just hadn't made the news yet.
So I drive back to the airport. I go to all the places I went before and talk to a couple of other people, and still nobody knows anything. One person kind of thought a bus had come, but wasn't sure. Another kind USAir employee gave me a food voucher so I could at least get dinner. I had my mother paged. Still nothing.
Finally, I said, "Okay, screw this noise," and went home. I'd killed nearly three hours, paid two minimum parking charges, and when I got home the phone rang. It was my mother. She'd had me paged, I figured out, about five minutes before I'd arrived at BWI the second time. When I didn't respond to the page, she'd gotten a cab home.
I sent a letter to USAir, telling this whole story, and they sent my mother a $100 voucher for credit on another flight, to be used within a year, which she ended up not using.
We now use Southwest for our trips to Maine.
Paul
Never heard of JetBlue, since I'm in the plains states.
Personally, I'll stick with the motorcycle, and skip the planes.
Travis
"but being angry over percieved slights when it's more likely the front line soldiers believed they were telling you the truth (they no more knew than you that the gate agent wasn't out there, for example) is just a waste of stomach lining."
See, whereas my belief is that they were saying anything they could to keep me moving along and being someone else's problem. For instance, the ticketing agent initially told me he only had a seat in the back, squished in the middle. When I expressed frustration over this, he tapped some keys on his keyboard and announced he'd moved me forward and onto the aisle. But when I checked in the next morning, lo and behold, they told me that, no, I was still in the seat in the back, and no change had been put through, nor COULD it have been put through because there were no other seats. So when the guy claimed to have moved me...no. He didn't.
As for the woman in the downstairs office, she looked me right in the face and said, "I've called ahead to the hotel. They have a room waiting for you. We're picking up the cost." This is not a misunderstanding of company policy. This is not a misreading of a situation. This is someone telling me point blank that they've taken an action that they had not, in fact, taken. The clerk at the hotel had been on duty for the previous hour. He was the only one receiving calls. He received no call. He had no rooms. I only got one through a miracle. People following me (and more people were sent, believe me, I was there when they trooped in) got nothing and were being shuttled to other hotels with rooms where they, too, were being charged for them.
My reading of the Jetblue employee mindset was simple: Say anything to get the passengers out of the airport with minimal argument.
That, as they say, is no way to run an airline.
PAD
When my wife and I were about to fly out to Las Vegas to get married, the plane we were about to embark on had computer problems. They literally had to remove the computer and put in a new one on the plane. Not a big deal. Hour delay, but no other problems.
Coming home after getting married, the plane we were flying home on was changed. Ended up being a totally different type of plane. Not a big deal, BUT this put an aisle between me and my wife. THAt was a big deal.... The guy sitting next to me flat out refused to move, even after telling him we were newlyweds. And he used a 4 letter 'F' word to punctuate the point. (I was not a happy camper.) As it turns out, the seat next to my wife was empty, so I just slid in there.
The worst travel experience I've had was when we were coming back from celebrating our 7 year anniversary on a cruise that left out of Galveston. Now the only way to get to Galveston from Chicago is fly into Houston and then drive there or hire a limo service or some such deal. Not knowing how long it would take to disembark the cruise ship and then get to Houston airport, I booked us a later flight at aroung 5:30pm. Or course we arrived at the airport around noon...
Fast forward to about 4:30. We're tired of this long wait. It was then announced our flight, that ws due to arrive at about 4:45, was delayed an hour. Sh*t, another hour of waiting... Hour passes, no news. Go up and talk to the gate personnel, they have no idea. It's still showing on their computer that it's supposed to arive "now". They're scrambling, because no airplane is at their gate, yet it shows arrived at their gate.
Comes to pass that it arrived at another gate. Gate personnel had no clue. No one called them, nothing showed on their computer, and it still showed on the boards that the flight had "arrived" at our gate.
So here we are, all the passengers following the gate personnel to the next gate. We arrived, and they're about to shut the door for the flight to leave! The one woman working our gate is screaming at the top of her lungs for them to stop. They look at her like she has a third eye.
Finally arrive at the gate, lots of confusion. I then hear that same woman say, very loudly, "Weren't you wondering why NO ONE was boarding this flight??"
After that, we get on board, people now have to move out of OUR seats and take their luggage out of the overhead bins as well. Suffice it to say, we took off and landed safely. Just 2 and half hours late.... and nary an apology from anyone. Except for the woman from the gate who kept saying "sorry" to everyone who boarded.
I've still yet to get any reply from anyone from all the emails and letters I sent. Though after 2+ years, I think I can give up waiting now.
Oh, and in all those instances, it was Continental.
I fly for my work every couple of weeks. The sad part is I've gotten kinda numb to these kind of situations. IT just keeps happening again and again and again and again....
I've got friends who work in the frontline airline business who tell horror stories of unreasonable passengers and also have friends who frequently travel and have their own horror stories, so I think it works both ways.
But, yeah, it does sound like Peter was literally shuttled from one ineffectual person to another in this case and definitely has reason to be fuming.
BIG trick after the case is to write a letter (polite but not too held-back) about your utter disappointment in the standard of service and the fact that it's not somethign going wrong that was the problem, but the way it was SUBSEQUENTLY handled. Oh, anddropping in the fact that you write for a living scares the bejeezus out of the PR department in many cases :)
John
Bobb - "The only other solution is to build bigger airports with more runways. Like adding lanes to the crowded highway."
I'm a fan of re-regulation, but I know our politicians don't have the backbone to do what needs doing. Failing this, build high-speed rail links between medium-distant big cities. Between the crap one has to go through in security and the waits and the annoyance of having to then travel INTO the city from the outlying airport, city-center-to-city-center high speed rail could take quite a bit of pressure off airports by eliminating some of the shorter-ranged traffic.
Den - "Food? Are there any airlines that serve a real meal at all anymore? Was there ever a time when the quality was good?"
Flown Japan Air Lines (JAL) recently? I've never had any complaints in my several years of flying out to Japan on them. Now, if only they had a direct flight from Ottawa rather than my having to deal with O'Hell ... excuse me, O'Hare ... or Vancouver airports for connections. :p
Starwolf, high speed rail is a dream that this country really needs to get behind. We're now close to a decade behind Europe and Japan when it comes to effecient, affordable high-speed rail lines. It comes down to greed and politics (not quite the same thing): You can't run modern, high-speed trains on our 19th century rail lines. We have the right of way, or at least some corporation does, but no one is willing to front the billions of dollars it would take to upgrade those tracks to accomodate HSR. There's some talk of using the existing tracks with newer, faster trains for what you might call a mid-speed rail system, but that's like running NASCAR races around your circular driveway.
Politicians have the power to address the infrastructure issues facing the country, but lack the financial backing to get it done...thus, anyone proposing a tax increase to pay for such needed projects is prone to failure and loss of elected office.
No, can't say that I've ever flown Japan Airlines.
I always wanted to go to Japan, though.
Which hotel was this? I'm a little baffled as to why they're is getting a free pass here. After all, the desk clerk was one of the few players in the whole ordeal who said something they knew for certain at the time to be demonstrably false. However, unlike the airline employees, the desk clerk doesn't even have the excuse of trying to pass off a problem on the next person down the line because he had no real power to fix it, anyway. If he had a room available (as he apparently did), there was no logical reason to say that he did not to a person willing to pay for lodgings.
Alternatively, maybe the desk clerk was not in fact lying, and the hotel was in fact "booked solid." However, when the found themselves face-to-face with a famous person with no place to lay his head, they un-booked a room. Works out well for PAD, but imagine the shock that other guy is going to have when the hotel has somehow lost his reservation and he doesn't have a writing credit to trade on.
I'm sure there are other explanations for the sudden appearance of an available room once a name and claim to fame was dropped, but I can't think of any that don't involve a hideous breach of customer service standards.
The problem with getting the politicians to fund highspeed rail is that, if you look at the dominant politicians in our country today, they are all from rural disricts or from states where the majority population is rural. They couldn't give a rat's ass about making it easier for people living large or medium-sized urban areas to travel.
Den: Huh, I suppose that's one way to put it. Unless you're willing to put in several stops along the high-speed rail system you're talking about, so the rural areas you're going to use emminent domain on to put in the new rail lines that can handle the SOTA trains, why would they be in favor of it? They get no benefit except noise, inconveniences due to construction, loss of land, etc. However, I'm assuming we're talking express, get on in one city, 2 hours later (with no stops) get off in another. If not, then it's probably going to boil down to trying to get several sets of politicians to shake hands and work together at the municipal, state, and federal level. Good luck with all that...
If, and it's a big "if," if someone can develop a high speed rail system that shows definite financial benefits for all the cities, counties, and states involved, you might, MIGHT, be able to get something together. I have not studied how they did it in Europe and Japan, so I would love to hear about how much land was taken with their version of emminent domain, if their environmental impact studies are as rigorous and politically involved as ours would be, and if any of these systems operate on a positive financial basis. Seriously, does anyone know?
Hm, NYC Police just initiated random checkpoints of people entering the subway stations. Checkpoints are set up outside of the turnstiles. Apparently, these checks are not profiling, working on some predetermined headcount and anyone not consenting to a search is turned away from the subway station. I'm not sure how effective that this will be since, in a worst case scenerio for anyone wanting to detonate a device, this will mean they simply need to refuse to submit if they are chosen and leave the station, walk a few block away and reenter at another location.
Fred
Sure there are, Janet. Hotels don't book every room. Some are out of service for a variety of reasons - it hasn't been cleaned, something's broken, a block are reserved for a group that doesn't need all of them, a room for staff to crash in, etc. Perhaps rules said he had no rooms, but he was willing to bend a rule (or outright break one) for PAD.
They get no benefit except noise, inconveniences due to construction, loss of land, etc.
Inconveniences due to construction hasn't stopped the expansion of I-25 through the southern Denver metro corridor (an expansion from 4 to 8 lanes each way... yeah, that'll solve traffic problems).
If, and it's a big "if," if someone can develop a high speed rail system that shows definite financial benefits for all the cities, counties, and states involved, you might, MIGHT, be able to get something together.
Voters in the Denver metro last year approved a small tax increase to pay for a 15 year project that will add a dozen new light rail lines around the Denver metro.
Some of these lines are using nothing but existing rail lines.
The hope is, eventually, to have light rail lines extend all the way down to Colorado Springs and north to Fort Collins.
They've already started the Colorado Springs line by building a light rail track next to the I-25 expansion for a few miles.
Seriously, does anyone know?
I have no idea. The only thing I know is that these sorts of projects are upon state and local governments.
Already, our government wants to ditch Amtrak and hand it over to private interests and the states.
Traveling on Amtrak isn't a horrible way to go, IF they're on time and can get some faster trains on the tracks. That, and if their cars don't lose power so you're not forced to sit on a track in the middle of southern Iowa in +90 heat & humidity, making the car feel like an oven.
Speaking of trains vs. planes. After 9/11, I thought it amazing that, after years of letting Amtrack starve, the politicians in Washington couldn't write a bailout check for the airline industry fast enough.
>Posted by: Bobb at July 22, 2005 08:53 AM
>Starwolf, high speed rail is a dream that this
>country really needs to get behind.
Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud...
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again...
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
[big finish]
Monorail!
Homer: Mono... D'oh!
I've only had good times flying. Of course my mom works for a major airline and I've only flown first class. :)
Craig - "Voters in the Denver metro last year approved a small tax increase to pay for a 15 year project that will add a dozen new light rail lines around the Denver metro.
Some of these lines are using nothing but existing rail lines."
I hope you have better luck with that than we had. Politicos finally decided to put in light rail here. The so-called O-Train. "O" for "Ottawa", of course, but many people immediately dubbed it the "Zero" train.
Anyway, not being willing to spend what it takes to do it RIGHT, they decided to have a "pilot project" going from an area of low density population to an area of ... well, an open field just outside the center of the city, where one then transfers to buses to actually get anywhere. Worse, it, too, runs on "existing lines". Trouble is, those lines were designed for heavy freight cars. They soon discovered that the lighter O-Train couldn't run at its specified speed without taking damage on the old, unkept lines.
Way to save money and completely screw up a project, guys. Feh.
Sure there are, Janet. Hotels don't book every room. Some are out of service for a variety of reasons - it hasn't been cleaned, something's broken, a block are reserved for a group that doesn't need all of them, a room for staff to crash in, etc. Perhaps rules said he had no rooms, but he was willing to bend a rule (or outright break one) for PAD.
**********************************
But yet there was a room. If PAD hadn't been PAD (or if the clerk had not recognized him), he might have faced a sleepless night in a hotel lobby or in the airport and so on.
Either every room is booked or it isn't. The exceptions you note are certainly reasonable ones, but what's not reasonable is not giving an exhausted traveler the full story.
If it's midnight, I probably don't care if the room hasn't been cleaned or if there's no soap (I'll run out for some the next morning) or if the TV is broken (I'll be unconscious the whole time anyway). Just let me know. "Well, we do have this one room... it's on the 13th floor and is haunted but..."
I'll even sign waivers if it'll make them feel better, but don't tell me there's no place for me to sleep when there is.
SER: "I'll even sign waivers if it'll make them feel better, but don't tell me there's no place for me to sleep when there is."
Waivers aside, unfortunately, people often turn around and sue hotels when they wake up in a potentially hazardous room the next morning. For some corporate-types, it's easier to deal with the ill-will of turning customers away than the potential lawsuit that could develop out of a customer staying in a poorly kept/dangerous room.
Not to mention the fact that there's all sorts of bizzaro municipal/federal guidelines that often require hotels to leave a certain number of rooms open, no matter what. I know in the southeast, some states have passed legislation to keep a certain percentage of hotel rooms vacant, no matter what, during hurricane season or expected times of natural disaster.
Not that I'm trying to say all of the above is morally right or anything... I'm just explaining, is all.
I have to agree with Peter; being stuck in a situation in which you have no control is one thing; being told by somebody that they're doing something to help when in fact they have no intention of helping and they're just shining you on is very different- and hugely annoying.
Getting the right seat assignment is a very big bugbear for me. When I booked a ticket to London on Virgin last month, I was told I could book an aisle seat for the return flight, but there were no more seats allocated for the outbound flight. The best they could do is put a request in the computer requesting an aisle seat. Needless to say when I got to Newark Airport a few weeks later, the agent said there was no such request in the computer, but since I'd got there well ahead of time, there was no trouble getting an aisle seat. And I double-checked, my seat for the return flight was already booked.
Two weeks later, I check in at Heathrow, only to discover that I had no seat assignment (even though I'd written down the seat number and confirmed it twice). The flight was overbooked because yesterday's flight had been cancelled, so aisle seats were in short supply, but the agent called through to whoever those mysterious people are that they call and managed to get me an aisle seat. Bear in mind that I had booked that seat almost a month ago, and re-confirmed it twice, but somewhere along the line it disappeared. My wife couldn't figure out why I was so pissed off, because as she pointed out, I managed to get my seat, and the agent had been very helpful, but my point was, I should have had that seat all along and not needed any help!
As long as I'm on a roll, the other thing that really pisses me off is when you try to complaint about the lack of service you got from a previous employee, and employee #2 looks at you with that smarmy selt-satisfied look and says, 'Oh, do you happen to know who you spoke to, sir?' knowing full well that most customers never manage to retain that bit of information. Funny how their expression changes when I pull out the moleskin notebook that I always keep in my back pocket and read back the employee name and the employee number that you can get off the ID tag around their neck. So my advice to anyone having a bad flight is, write everything down, even if you've got to make notes on the back of cocktail napkins. You'd be surprised at how useful that information can be later on.
Can you tell from the above that I've had more than my share of bad travel experiences? James Tichy, I don't suppose your mom wants to adopt another son?
I hope you have better luck with that than we had.
I hope so too.
They're obviously building new lines as well, but I don't think they'd use the existing ones if they didn't think they were useful.
Either that, or it could just be the land that preexisting lines are on, and they're going to build new lines next to the old ones, or replace the old lines.
Either way, they're not tearing down anybody's house to make this project happen.
People have complained about the noise that light rail generates and I'm thinking that these people need to live next to a real set of train tracks where freight trains go by 2 or 3 times a day, at all hours of the night.
Then they'd have nothing to complain about with light rail. :)
Anybody hear read Amazing Spiderman? Remember the issue a few months ago when May's house burnt down? All she wanted to save was her photograph albulms and everything else could burn. Remember that, and how it made Peter feel?
My grandmother lived in NJ. She was flying out to visit grandchildren in Vancouver, Canada. This was the firt time she was going to see her youngest grandchild out of diapers, first time she would actually be able to talk to him. She loaded up her luggage with a whole bunch of photo albumls to show her grandchildren. (I was the only grandchild of hers who lived on the east coast. She had 5 up in Vancouver.)
Once she got to her son's house, she found that somebody had gone through her luggage and stolen all the photo albums. People steal old pictures and sell them to people for decorations...so that people could pretend they have family history or something.
Every picture my grandmother had of her mother, her father, her grandparents, and her son and daughter when they were children were gone. Nothing to show her grandchildren.
It absolutely devestated my grandmother. She said it was the single worse thing that ever happened to her that didn't involve a loved one dying.
Airling never bothered to even apologize to her, even though the robbery happened while the luggage was in their care.
Janet's point is completely valid. PAD received preferential treatment because the clerk was a fan. It does not appear that he sought preferential treatment or did anything wrong, but he was given a benefit which was not given to someone else, and which was not going to be given to him until the clerk recognized him. JetBlue's conduct seems to have been abominable; How much of the mess was also the hotel's fault is impossible to assess.
On the issue of preferential treatment, what is the consensus on the Oprah Winfrey-Hermes situation? I was disgusted that Ms. Winfrey presented the situation as a discrimination issue, when the facts support Hermes: They were not open. It was after closing time, so it is not surprising that they were closed. Hermes does not make a general practice of opening up after hours simply because a prospective customer would prefer that they did. If any non-celebrity were to be denied access to a retail establishment after closing time, the reasonable assumption would be that this was a perfectly normal event, not worthy of further consideration. If I understand Ms. Winfrey's position, it is that she was discriminated against because she was not given special consideration as a celebrity, rich person and high queen of the universe. I don't find her position convincing.
ok i'm gonna be cheeky now sorry bout this but i'm coming to the states in september for a month or so can anybody recomend a "good" budget airline for US internal flights as i'm planning on traveling around a bit
thanks
Budget airline? You're joking, right? I don't think such a thing truly exists. :)
If you're planning on travelling around alot, on short notice with flights, you're probably not going to have the best options in the world.
Southwest seems to have a lot of great prices for some routes, but you need to book in advance.
United's "budget" service, Ted, is also a way to go I suppose.
It's all going to depend on where you're going. :)
You could also try Spirit Air depending on where you're going, ATA or there's a new airline called USA3000 that I haven't tried yet. Right now, I'm flying Delta to get to Chicago for the Wizard World convention.(Peter, why do you not go there? Do you not love Chicago anymore?) This flight is free because of getting bumped 3 times while in the Ohio airport. THERE was some fun. As soon as I'm off work, I'll tell you about it.
I've been on Spirit Air before and haven't really had a problem with them. Same with ATA. USA3000 is one I haven't tried. The only reason why I fly Delta is that it's the only "major" carrier at the airport that's close to the house.
We should have gone to San Diego but we rented a car and went to Flagstaff, Sedona, and Phoenix instead. We had a wonderful time. Then we stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Phoenix for a quick dinner. Before the food even arrived, the manager comes through warning anyone parked near the trees in front to move their car, some of the trees were starting to lean. My husband rushed out to move the car and sees, not one, but two trees covering our rental car and the car next to us. We learned that the fire dept. won't remove trees from cars on private property. Cracker Barrel couldn't find anyone to come out and eventually got an electical contractor with a chain saw to come out and remove the trees. We were there for over three hours. The manager acted like they were doing us a favor by removing their trees from our car because "it was an act of God and we are not responsible." He also handed us the bill for the dinner we barely ate, then thought better about it when my husband started raising his voice.
The tree that did the damage looked diseased and rotted in parts, we took pictures with a camera we had to purchase from Cracker Barrel. Our insurance company will send someone out in a few days to check out the tree which is now completely gone.
Fortunately the damage wasn't too bad and we were able to get home. We have a $500.00 deductible making this a very expensive trip.
just wanted to say thanks for the travel advice i'll chheck em out
don't know if anyones intrested but if you come to europe Ryan Air & Easyjet are worth using again it helps if you book in advance as seats are limited
once again cheers
I had a great experience with Jet Blue Customer Service. No joke.
When we went to Orlando last October, someone stole my son's Mickey Mouse hat out of our baggage for some reason. I called customer service to complain and see if they could try and find it. They called me back a couple of days and asked if I would take a settlement in return for them closing the investigation. Needless to say, that their settlement that was good towards another flight was a much bigger amount than the hat was worth (barring the emotional cost of losing it -- not really, my son was 2 at the time and could care less). It could just be their JFK branch but this experience really impressed me and I am a loyal follower to this day.