Flying
I have been scheduling a bunch of flights for this summer. This morning, I just scheduled one through US Airways because I had a flight voucher for them. I checked their website and discovered the voucher ($300) would cover the entire flight for me to travel to Dayton. So, as per the rules of the voucher, I made a call to their telephone reservation number.
I wasn’t even put on hold, and I got a real live person. That was refreshing.
So, I let the woman know what day I wanted to fly out, and I was flexible about the times of departing and leaving. I had the web window open so I could see all the prices, but I wanted to have her pick the flight. Perhaps I would get something cheaper then what was shown to me.
“Flight 7245 departing Rochester at 10:15am”. I gulped, knowing that the flight she mentioned was the most expensive on the list I saw.
“Flight 7745 departing Dayton at 6:10am”. I gulped again, knowing that was the second most expensive I saw in the list.
I held my breath as she “checked the prices”. There would be a difference in cost from my voucher of $734.
Yeah, right.
“I’m sorry, but that is not acceptable. I know for a fact I can get it cheaper on your website.”
“Ok sir, let me try again.”
I let her try again, this time the difference in cost was about $300. I told her no again, and now I let her know I could see all the flights and costs, and listed off the flights I would like.
“Ah sir! Much cheaper! It looks like you can get this trip for free!”
“Awesome. I’d like to book it please.”
So. The moral of the story. Telephone reservations suck. Chances are they are going to give you the most expensive flights possible, so make sure you have the web interface in front of you with the lower cost flights… or at very least know the flight numbers you want to be on.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Delicious capitalism!