He also hit upon another of my big pet peeves. He was flying between two large cities with regular air service. I asked what time he wanted to fly and he asked for the latest flight.
"9p."Are you kidding me? He started by asking for the latest flight and ended up flying at 2p. He passed up four later flight times! Seriously, if you want to fly early afternoon just say so and we'll work from there. Or (here's a thought) give me an exact time and we'll work from there. If he said he wanted to fly at 130p then I would have had him choose between 1130a and 2p. No problem!
"What's the earlier flight?"
"7p".
"Earlier?"
"6p."
"Earlier?"
"4p."
"Earlier?"
"2p."
"Earlier?"
"1130a."
"I guess I'll go with 2p."
Related problem? Everyone has a different sense of what different times mean. I've heard 'late afternoon' termed for everything from 1p to 8p. I've had people ask for 'crack of dawn' when they really meant noon. Just tell me the real time you want to go. I'm not judging you!
Believe me, today's day off was much needed.
2 comments:
Your experienece leaves me feeling guilty. I thought it was great that I could save almost $3,000 on my last flight to Asia by routing home via Honolulu instead of Tokyo. Even greater when I was able to do an overnight with no extra charge (I went surfing and cliff diving - low cliffs for the father of 5 - with my old college roomate). When I checked in online for my flight I found that my red-eye flight was in economoy class (the rest of my flights were booked for business) and that my direct flight stopped in LA (I now know that non-stop is the only thing that means non-stop. The other problem was that I was online and jetlagged when I found this off and had access to my email to send a note to the travel agent who booked the ticket. I complained quite thoroughly. Of course, all of this had been noted on my initinerary (except that direct vs non-stop thing) and I should have realized that saving $3,000 by routing and overnight to Hawaii had to cost something - like going back into economy.
Ah well, the surfing was worth it.
Steve, that's the tricky part. There are so many quirky details that it's just too darn easy for something to fall through the cracks. On the traveler side they (understandably) want possible problems spelled out. On the agent side we (understandably) think that travelers have to take responsibility for at least some of their own situation. Somewhere in between there is the solution.
Glad you got some surfing in. I was tempted back in 2001 but never did it. When I go back (someday) I'll give it a whirl.
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