TODAYS COLUMN IN THE OC REGISTER THE PERILS OF SURF TRAVEL, part 1 By Corky Carroll The following is an absolutely true story. You will think it is made up because it is so ridiculous, but it is all fact. It involves some friends of mine, Debra and Dave Swaney, who recently came to visit me at my tropical getaway house near Ixtapa on Mainland, Mexico. Deb and Dave live in Jacksonville, Florida and are good surfers, she being former East Coast champ a couple of times. Dave is not real high-tech and is not known for his airline reservation skills, have once booked flights for his whole family to San Jose, Costa Rica and being shocked to find out that when they got off the plane they were actually in San Jose, California. See, already you think I am making this up, but I am not. It really happened. But this time Dave was very proud of himself because he found flights out of his local Jacksonville airport, which saved them a long drive to Orlando and also was ten dollars cheaper. It involved flying to Atlanta, from there to Mexico City and connecting on to Ixtapa. Sounded good on paper. But, as happens more often than not and especially when there are multi connections involved, the flight from Atlanta to Mexico City was late. Even though it got there in time for them to make their connection to Ixtapa they had been bumped off the flight when they were an hour late to check in. On top of that they were told there were no more available flights for two days. This is where I enter the picture. Knowing pretty much the ins and outs of traveling in Mexico I suggested they check with a local airline called Interjet, as they have two flights a day. So they immediately had dinner and procrastinated about doing it then or the next morning. Another phone call from me convinced them to do it right then, resulting in them getting the last flight available the next afternoon. So all is good and they get here and there are waves and everybody is happy, except for the fact that because they did not take the last leg of their incoming flight itinerary the first leg of the said itinerary going out the next week had been canceled. I guess they do that when you miss a flight. No problem, we will just drive the one hour each way to the airport and get it fixed, right? NOT. We go there and talk to United Airlines, who the outgoing flight is with, and they say they can’t do anything about it because the ticket was purchased using Travelocity and we would need to contact them. Red flags go off in my head. The last time I used Travelocity my three hour flight was cancelled and they re-routed me on a six connection 23 hr. and 55 min journey that was amazing to them that I would not except and took two hours of long distance phone calls to remedy. But at least as a result of that mess I had the international phone number to call. So I hand Dave my cell phone and tell him to be very clear and explicit when explaining the situation, which he assures me he will. I have done this way too many times and know that if you don’t spell it out to the ninth degree they will get it all wrong. So Dave gets on the phone and presses in all the codes that sets him up for the 20-minute wait for somebody to answer. When they finally do get on the line Dave says, “They cancelled my flight.” That’s it. No details. Everything in me wants to grab the phone right at that minute and take over. But instead I scribble on a pad of paper as fast as I can, writing upside down and backwards, that they need ALL DETAILS. I think he glanced at the pad but am sure he did not read it or pay any attention. The result was an hour of going back and forth giving fairly reasonable versions of the whole story, at least reasonable enough that any person with an IQ higher than 2 should have been able to figure out. Having no success getting this fixed the Travelocity agent decided to pass him off to “the airline.” So they transferred him to Delta, the airline that had been late coming into Mexico City. Naturally the Delta agent was in shock that Travelocity had pawned Dave off on him and told him that there was nothing Delta could do and he had to resolve this with Travelocity. One hour and 20 minutes on the phone long distance so far. STAYED TUNED FOR PART TWO NEXT WEEK.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 22:03:52 +0000
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