My rant against the airlines and travel agents

The BBQ Pit
1

Whaoo my first pit rant…
I have always been a little scared because I do not have the writting talent of most of the Dopers, and English isn’t my first language so please pardon me in advance!

So, here we go… I am going to France (my home country) on Thursday, with my husband. We have been very excited, lots of things have gone wrong in our lives lately and we need this vacation bad…
I bought my tickets months ago thru a travel agent.
I have my paper tickets in my hand a few days after that (back in February), everything looks great!!
Friday night, I come back from work and decide to call and comfirm those tickets. They say 48 hrs in advance, but hey, I like everything under control, so I check a little early…
“Flight XXX at 9:40, from Boston to Frankfurt, then Lyon?” tells me the service rep on the other line. “yes, 9:40 pm”…
“ummmm, we don’t have a plane at that time”… “what?! What do you mean, I have my tickets, I have the flight number, I have the ticket number, I got it all right here?!” “Nope, no flight”.
I really start to panic… 1000 thoughts in my head - the agency is a scam- she can’t read- I messed up the date?- etc etc…
I tell her there is no way… she puts me on hold…
She comes back a few minutes later and say “the company cancelled that flight back in May” “WHAT? and who the heck is suppose to tell the passengers their flight is cancelled?”
“well… ummm let’s see… You’re travel agent I guess”.
Well, of course, nobody told us… There are three companies involved here (can I name names??), company X, but the flight is operated by company Y and the travel agency Z. Neither X or Y or Z told us shit!
I couldn’t believe it…
“well there is a flight that day at 4:30 but it seems full” Oh fucking great…
So here I call company Y, because company X told me they were to blame… of course Y blames X and Z, and X blames Y and Z… That’s really really helping us…
We spent THREE hours on the phone with the companies Friday night, 3 hours… I am panicing, my husband takes over. I am all over the internet checking the travel agency Z… I look in the Better Business Bureau website and find them… as a partner or whatever… pretty much saying they’re all good… That makes me feel a little better, they’re not a scam…
So after all these hours on the phone, company Y rebooks us to the earliest flight, the 4:30 one… My husband on a waiting list… Great… Finally, because we spend so much freaking time on the phone, with now, the supervisor, he clears the waiting list (how?! no idea)… So we are booked on the flight… ok, ok… breath breath… We get some confirmation numbers… ok, I feel a little better… We hang up… Whoaa it’s almost 10 pm…
Then I think… Holly crap, what about the connection… we leave 5 hours before we were suppose to… I look at the time… Oh great… we’re gonna wait 6 hours in Frankfurt… No way… I call back… (well hubby does, because I am about to have a nervous breakdown)… the new agent…cant’ find us anywhere!!! after more discussions, more explaining, more time waisted, he finds us and we book an earlier flight, “only” three hours wait. We’ll manage.
I make sure hubby ask about the return flights…
You guessed it… they can’t find us on any return, we now have a one way ticket. It just gets better and better by the hour…
All this crap, we are explained, it because we are booked on another computer… Of course, damn, that makes sense… So company X and Y don’t see each others info, although this flight is specifically both theirs. And you know what, I don’t give a fuck why by now, I just want to make sure we’re on a damn plane, to the right destination, on the day we’re suppose to leave… I have a job, we have plans made in France, we can’t fucking leave any other time.
Now, I told them I want to reprint tickets, I don’t want to keep the old ones that are all wrong anyway… They tell me I have to go to the airport for that… Oh, geez… Thank God I live so close to the airport, I mean, how could this be faisable for the poor paying customer who lives 2 hrs away?!
So today I did go to the airport, to the company Y… after 40 minutes in line (yes 40), I explain her the story briefly. She says “well those tickets are company X, I can’t see you” OH MY GOD, IT IS STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN. More explanations, etc etc. She puts a sticker on our tickets with a formal looking stamp… I made her tell me 4 times we’d be ok with that.
I am petrified we won’t get into that plane… let me tell you, we’re going to the airport 3 hours in advance to make sure, because we know for a fact it is overbooked.
I can’t believe the lack of info, the inefficency, the rudeness of all the people we dealt with… They didnt feel sorry for shit…
This is not over, we got to talk to the travel agent… my hubby did talk to them and complained and said he’ll hear back from us…
I want money back, whatever service they’re selling they didn’t provide that’s for sure.
I really can say I have never been so angry and stressed in my entire life…
Oh my god, this is so long… and believe me there are a lot more to say… we’ve been hung up on etc etc…
Ohhhhhhhhh what can I do…??? what can I expect??

2

I don’t use travel agents any more. The last one I used screwed up the arrangements so badly I figured I could not have done worse by myself. The bottom line was that he never sent the money to the appropriate recipients for the land arrangements. I found myself in Tahiti at 3:00 in the morning with no place to stay for the next two weeks.

From what you’ve written, it seems to me that it was the travel agent’s job to have done all of the running and calling around that you did. If you are out any money (which I bet you will be by the time it’s done) you should go after the agent for the difference.

I hope none of the airlines you’re dealing with is Air France. I could tell you a long story about them, too.

3

No MLS, no Air France, they’re always too expensive!

I understand the travel agent messed up not telling us the original flight was cancelled. By the way, they said they were never notified, “a computer glitch” they told us…
The problem was that is was Friday night, the agency was closed, my husband did talk to them this morning but we already had rebooked the 4:30… There is no way I could wait any longer, certainly not till Monday, the 4:30 plane would have been even fuller by then… I trusted myself and only myself to do things right that time…
I wonder how much I can ask the travel agent for a refund? It doesn’t say what they charge ; it’s just one price for all tickets.
But I will get something let me tell you… I deserve it now, damned!

4

Could be worse. :slight_smile:

Try calling the agency and speak to a manager, and ask them to search the history of your PNR (that’s your reservation) to see if a schedule change was received and if they tried notifying you.

As far as a refund…if you fly on those tickets (or the reissued tickets), the chances of getting a complete refund are pretty slim. They might rebate you some money, but I doubt that they’ll refund the entire value…

-UNLESS-

they can prove that the airline never notified them of the schedule change. Then it’s up to them to battle with the airline on your behalf.

Good luck.

5

I’m so sorry, Zazie :frowning:

I love my travel agent. I found one who worked hard to get me the best seats at the best prices and who did everything she could to make me happy - after that she got my entire family’s business and she hasn’t let us down since. If anyone in Moncton, NB, Canada wants to travel and needs a good agent, just email me, I’ll happily recommend her to anyone.

I really hope they refund you some of your money :frowning: they dropped the ball, big time.

6

Zazie, your English is very good and you get your point across with no problem at all!

The last time I went to a travel agent it was to plan a Western tour by train from Chicago. I told her the places we wanted to go and the trains we wanted to take. She practically threw a train schedule at me from across the table and told me to do it myself.

Now, guess who’s planning a trip to Paris next year? I’ve read from several sources that Air France has problems and that sometimes Delta actually is Air France. Now that you’ve been through this nightmare, do you have any suggestions on how I can avoid the hassle? Should I just fly to London instead and take the train?

I hope that you can manage to have a really good trip out of all of this! Vive la France!

7

Thank you guys! Thanks a lot!
I actually usually don’t want/need to go thru a travel agent as I only need airline tickets, no other ammenities. But most of the time, they get me the cheapest deals… Those tickets were not cheap per say, but litteraly half the price of the ones I found thru the major web sites (Orbitz, Travelocity, etc) or the airlines websites.
Thanks for the tip Rysdad, I will ask them to search.
Thanks for the sympathy Venoma! Makes me feel warmer and better!
MLS, I am jealous of your Tahiti trip!

8

If only Southwest Airlines flew overseas, I’d never go on any other carrier. I’ve long been a cheerleader for them. Southwest knows how to get things done without screwing around, and without the pettiness and rudeness of other airlines.

I’m so glad they are doing well these days - they deserve it. Never had the first kind of problem with Southwest, including the time I had to change my reservation at the last minute.

9

Thanks Zoe, we must have posted at the same time.
I never flew Air France internationaly, only within France and never had a problem. I never flew USA-France with them as they never are the cheapest.
MLS seems to have a bad story about them ( I wouldn’t mind hearing it!!)
My opinion, if you’re going into Paris, fly into Paris. If you really want to avoid Air France, you could find another company, but landing somewhere else and taking a train seems more like a hassle to me.
My only advice, once you’re booked, call the airlines EARLY and make sure they got you in their computer system!!! And call a couple of times to make sure!
I flight pretty often, not like a business man, but as a tourist. I really never had anything to complain about, no major screw ups.
Those stupid airlines I dealt with kept telling me that there were 2 or 3 computer systems so they couldn’t see them all… geez… find a way damned, specially when you’re coupled with another company on a particular flight.

10

Air France has great food. They are fine as long as nothing goes wrong. Waiting to be ticketed for the return flight, the ticket counter was very disorganized. When we got to the front of the mob (it was not really a line) the person at the desk asked if we would take $350 to be bumped to a later flight. Sure, why not. Just to be sure there was no misunderstanding, I had him write down the amount – in dollars – that we would get. We had to go to about 3 different people, through several different mobs, to continue this transaction, and finally got to the person who was to give us the money. She sort of threw some francs at us. When I asked what that was equivalent to in dollars, she shrugged and said she didn’t know. Obviously didn’t care. We wouldn’t leave until she found out, and then it turned out to be the equivalent of $250, not $300. Not what we were promised. Look, see, here where that person over there wrote it. Shrug. Oh, well, that’s not what you’re getting. Argued for a while. Finally the woman behind the counter says, "Fine. " And tore up our tickets! EXCUSE ME??? I paid for those tickets! You can go back to your other flight, then, she says. That flight, by now, of course, is full and about to depart. We finally got 2 tickets for that one, but they in different sections of the airplane. I was traveling with my daughter, who has a major fear of flying. We made it onto the plane with seconds to spare, and my kid was a wreck, and no one would change places with us. To make it worse, when we got home, Air France had broken – and I mean majorly broken – my sturdy hard-sided American Tourister suitcase. Smashed, torn, handle half ripped off. It took a similar bureaucratic hassle to eventually get reimbursed the grand total of $50 for the ruined luggage.

What made the whole thing especially infuriating was the arrogant and rude attitude of everyone we dealt with from A.F. They had no concept of customer service at all. I travel a fair amount, and they are definitely at the bottom of my list. Well, probably ahead of some third-world countries’ airlines and Aeroflot, which I hear does not especially believe in routine maintenance, but right down near the bottom anyway.

11

That sucks MLS, I can’t believe she tore up your tickets like that! This is unbelievable…
You know I understand that in those type of jobs some customers think they’re owed the entire world, but please, we’re not asking for a favor here, we’re asking for a service we are paying for… That drives me nuts.