Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Why the airlines always get the last laugh by J. G. Fabiano I am not a traveler. I love where I live and the last time I took an extended trip it became one of my worst memories, which I still refer to as my ‘Caribbean Calamity.’ However, I am also getting older, which means my body feels the cold more than it did a decade ago. Also, my wife, who watches her family go to the Caribbean Island of St. Maarten every year without her, especially deserves a winter break, if only for putting up with me for the past 35 years. Last June I booked a trip for my wife and daughter to join the rest of the family on the sunny island of St. Maarten. I could not go was because the planned trip was in mid-January and I did not feel I could miss a week of school. Time passed and circumstances changed. My daughter could no longer take the vacation because she was starting Law School and I suddenly found myself with an unexpected week’s vacation. Everything looked like it was falling into place with my wife and me able to enjoy our first winter break together in years. My sister-in-law then suggested I call USAir and change the name on the ticket from my daughter’s to mine. This seemed like an easy task since I had bought the tickets in the first place. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The first people I called were from the Internet site, ‘cheapcaribbean.com’ where I bought the tickets. My daughter told me to use them because she said they offered the best deals on tickets - and she was right. I bought the tickets at a discounted rate and forgot about them. The people at ‘cheapcaribbean.com’ told me there was no way I could change the name on the ticket. They said USAir’s policy was that no ticket could be transferred from one person to another even if I had bought the tickets in the first place. I told them I did not buy the tickets from USAir. I bought them from ‘cheapcaribbean.com.’ The representative for ‘cheapcaribbean.com,’ who would only give his name as ‘Alan ZJ’, told me they were simply the travel agent who made the purchase. He told me I should call USAir direct and see if they could help, so, off to the wonderful world of USAir customer service I went. I talked to six, count them, six, different customer service agents, each of whom told me there was no way I could change the name on the ticket. I argued that this made little sense since I had bought the ticket in the first place. They all reiterated that there was nothing they could do for me, so, off into the wonderful world of airline supervisors I went. The third, and supposedly king of all supervisors, because he told me I could speak to no one else, told me there was nothing he could do for me except sell me another ticket. When he quoted the price of a new ticket it was three times the cost of the original ticket. However, he did offer to credit me $100 from the original ticket against a $100 service charge. I argued that this made absolutely no sense and - this is the God’s honest truth - he told me that USAir was in business to make money and customer service had little to do with it. Now, you just might remember some of the problems USAir was having during the holidays with more than 300 flights canceled and thousands of travelers stranded after their computers shut down and baggage handlers called in sick. This was at exactly the same time that USAir corporate spokesman Chris Chiamis was telling ‘The Today Show’ on NBC that employees are dedicated to our customers! I demanded to speak to someone else and, apparently the king of all supervisors had had enough of me because he gave me the number of a company executive responsible for customer by the name of Kay Byrd. The next day I called Ms. Byrd who refused to take my call. Instead I was handed off to someone called Rita who handed me off to someone called Patrice who, to my amazement, said he was going to try and work with me to resolve my problem. I guessed maybe the word had got out about me and everybody in USAir knew I was not going to go away until I had got some kind of satisfaction. Patrice told me she would sell me a new ticket for the same price I paid in June. Not only that, she said my daughter would be credited for the ticket she did not use. This sounded like a pretty fair deal and I almost accepted until I discovered that she wouldn’t be able to use her credit for anything but a regular priced ticket and she would have to use the ticket by June 22, 2005. Which meant she would end up paying more than if she bought a new ticket at a new promotional price! For me the bottom line was that USAir stole a ticket from me. I guess you have to expect that kind of thing from a company desperate to bring in as much money as possible before they go under. CNN continued its report on USA by stating that Federal Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was not happy about USAir’s holiday problem and wanted it taken care of. A spokesman for Mineta, Robert Johnson, told Reuters that the agency would look very closely at why so many employees had called in sick at the height of the holiday rush. Maybe the transportation department could check and see if they treat their employees the same way they treat their customers. A few supervisors and vice-presidents of customer service later I got a call back from someone called Robin in USAir’s home office who told me she would gladly refund the full amount of the original ticket, but I would still have to buy a new ticket. I figured this was the best deal I’d get and took it. Robin told me I should have contacted her in the first place and I said I would have loved to except for their army of airline employees who wanted to stop the two of us getting together. It has been almost a week since USAir promised to credit me the price of the original ticket and the credit still hasn’t shown up on my credit card. So, I called Robin back and she told me it took seven to 10 days to process a credit. I pointed out that I was being charged interest on the missing credit and she told me that this was just how things worked. All I could think about was how, if I am a day late, the credit card company doesn’t hesitate to ding me a late charge and penalty interest. CNN went on to explain that many of USAir’s 20,000 union workers faced pay and benefit cuts to keep the airline flying. At the same time executives for USAir were saying that if the airline couldn’t get a billion dollars in cost reductions it would probably have to liquidate around mid-January. So here we are, my wife and I, with our bags packed for St. Maarten, wondering if we’ll actually get there before USAir goes under. If there’s no column here next week, you’ll know that they went under while we were away and we’re still stuck in paradise!
The End.
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