It was an exciting day this past June when my heavily traveled daughter booked our airline tickets to Edinburgh, the prelude to my semester in England. I had asked for her help reasoning that she knows what she's doing, and she took on the task of searching for the best price/deal for tickets. We were (and remain) ever so grateful to her for doing this on our behalf .
Unfortunately, the other day as I was printing hotel and airline reservation documents, I discovered that both airline tickets were in my name, instead of one for me and one for my husband. That was a seriously important discovery. I'm pretty sure this was not my daughter's doing. Something must have gotten confused when she set up the payment. I can't imagine what we would have done had we just shown up at the airport on the appointed day without having realized the problem. I guess no one does that any more, but I suppose it's within the realm of possibility. After making the discovery, I knew I would have to set about fixing the problem.
I went to the airline's website, thinking it would be a good idea to have a paper trail documenting my efforts. I have a SkyMiles account, so I entered my account number, my PIN and my email, as directed. Wouldn't you know it, the $%&^* system didn't recognize these three identifiers as belonging together. There were at least two alternative means of addressing the issue. One was the 800 number, which I wanted to avoid. I hate using the phone and I was working in the UMD library at the time (they don't like people to use their phones while working at the Lib). The other option was the comment/complaint e-mail service. That seemed like the best plan to me. I think it's always a good idea to have a paper trail, one of the behavior remnants of my time working as a low-level university administrator. I sent two comment/complaints. The first tackled the messed up reservations. I outlined the situation carefully and politely-- more or less as I have done here, only using specific numbers and pasting in the two itineraries. The second addressed the frustration (politely) of trying to use the online system with all of my numbers and getting a message about how they weren't recognized/accepted.
The next day I opened my e-mail to discover two replies. I was pleased by the quick response time. Then I read their content. The first one said, essentially, "We're sorry you made such a stupid mistake. We try to make our system idiot proof, but apparently you found a way around that. Call the 800 number, fool." (I paraphrase) Lovely, eh? It's so nice to be scolded by airline employees. The second said, "We checked your numbers and they're all correct." Yeah, I know that--that wasn't the question or the concern.
I wrote back to each of my "contacts" with just a little tone. In the first reply I suggested that it might be more effective customer service NOT to scold someone looking for assistance, and NOT to do the CYA dance, but rather to offer helpful guidance about how to make the repair. In the second, I was a bit more pleasant, merely pointing out that the reply didn't respond to the concern.
The upshot of all of this was, I had to call the @#$$%^& 800 number--something I KNEW was going to be painful. Was I right? Oh yeah, I was right--in SPADES.
I picked up the phone around 6:30 p.m. and dialed the number. I had all of my documents in front of me and I had the relevant numbers highlighted. Shortly after making the connection (and after the recorded operator suggested I might want to take a brief survey at the end of the call--which might be monitored), another recording came on to inform me that their service lines were congested and that this call might take an hour. Okay--THIS is why I hate 800 numbers. As previously noted, I don't like the phone to begin with, and I TRULY hate being on hold.
I had spent the day "walking all over kingdom come" (as my mother used to say), and I had just come home from working out at my old lady gym, so I had done the work of trying to center myself. I told myself, it wouldn't do any good to get frustrated--it was what it was and at least I was connected. I didn't really have the luxury of lots of time, so I resigned myself to hanging on in anticipation of a human connection.
I decided I should use the time productively--to the extent that that was possible. My husband had stripped the bed, so I thought--I could make up the bed while I wait. It was a little tricky doing it pretty much one-handed, but I managed. After about 10 minutes, I needed to find another occupation. I thought to myself, "I'll read"--nope, that didn't work. I wasn't in the right frame of mind. I played online Solitaire, then I switched to Free Cell, and back and forth for a number of hands. Meanwhile, the "system" played endless rotations of the same songs. I have now memorized Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillet's "Lucky" and Michael Buble's "Haven't Met You Yet." Fortunately, I don't hate these songs--even after hearing them--each about 10 times in short order. There were a few other songs which weren't quite so pleasant. One featured a singer who was really struggling to stay on tune; she lost her battle. Another was a song in Spanish, and I was on the verge of memorizing that one as well, although my Spanish is fairly rudimentary.
Finally, at 7:36, "Diane" got on the line and asked how she could be of service. After I narrated my tale of woe, she started to say she couldn't help me, but then caught herself (I guess we WERE being monitored after all) and said her supervisor would have to step in to help. Okay, I thought (and I guess I said it as well), this probably is a job for a supervisor. And then, she said "This is going to take some time." Okay, I breathed in and out and let it happen. And then, the music started all over again with some variations in the sequence--I guess their philosophy is 'keep 'em guessing'.
Periodically (say every 10 minutes), Diane got back on the phone to tell me "it is going to take some time"--yeah, I had figured that out--and by the way, she'd already made that clear. The problem was that two of the flights were with KLM and they had a different policy than good ole Delta, doncha know. As IF Delta would have been smooth sailing... It seems the supervisor had to check to see if the seats were still available. HUH? Excuse me, but wouldn't my husband's seats still be available? THEN KLM would cancel the reservation and Mrs. Supervisor lady would swoop in and make a new reservation.
Okay, thank you. But then Diane said "it is going to take some time" and I buckled a little bit--
"How much time?" I asked, weakly.
"I can't give you an estimate."
"I've already been on the phone over an hour," I said.
"Well, it's just going to take time." Diane was allowing a bit of tone to creep in to her voice.
FINALLY, at 8:05, Diane reported that switch had been made. Diane told me that the only reason Delta/KLM was willing to make the change was because my husband's return was a different date from mine. I shudder to think what I would have done if the tickets had the same return dates. I can assure you, I would not have exercised the restraint noted in this post. I do want to stress that Diane adopted the tone of her email counterpart mentioned earlier, in suggesting I was to blame and, she implied, deserved punishment. Her manner clearly suggested I'd gotten away with it this time, but watch out in the future!
Finally, I asked (and mind you, isn't it interesting I had to ask) if she would please send me the revised itinerary. "Okay" was her reply. But then I had the audacity to ask if she would also send a copy to my husband's email. I gave her the address, but I could tell she hadn't taken it down. Sure enough--he never received it. I did, and I guess that's all that matters.
So, I guess I should be resigned--"All's well that ends well"--eh?
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