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We love to fly you off the handle
May. 18th, 2006 02:00 pmI hate airlines. It's fair, because airlines hate me; I'm not a very good customer.
I don't care what I "accepted" when I bought a restricted-fare ticket. It grates on me at a very fundamental level that they're allowed to change the time of my ticket without asking me for no penalty at all, but I can't change it without paying them $50.
Even if they change the time 15 minutes earlier, which could (as I explained to the man who very possibly is sitting in a cubicle in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and only has that heavy South Asian accent because he's a recent immigrant) literally be the difference between me being able to make the flight and me not being able to.
And what grates even more is spending half an hour talking to this gentleman who could well be in Green Bay, and having him tell me, repeatedly, "Well, sir, that's a very difficult question for me to answer, but our policy is..." And to get the same stock line, without being transferred, when I respond with, "All right, can I talk to someone for whom it would be easy to answer?"
Let me stress that, in spite of the snarky Green Bay comment, it's not the (probable) outsourcing that bothers me. It's the fact that, whether Delta had me talking to someone from Outer Fredonia who learned English yesterday or to the guy who grew up next door to me, their script is such that it's more or less their policy not to help me.
I don't care what I "accepted" when I bought a restricted-fare ticket. It grates on me at a very fundamental level that they're allowed to change the time of my ticket without asking me for no penalty at all, but I can't change it without paying them $50.
Even if they change the time 15 minutes earlier, which could (as I explained to the man who very possibly is sitting in a cubicle in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and only has that heavy South Asian accent because he's a recent immigrant) literally be the difference between me being able to make the flight and me not being able to.
And what grates even more is spending half an hour talking to this gentleman who could well be in Green Bay, and having him tell me, repeatedly, "Well, sir, that's a very difficult question for me to answer, but our policy is..." And to get the same stock line, without being transferred, when I respond with, "All right, can I talk to someone for whom it would be easy to answer?"
Let me stress that, in spite of the snarky Green Bay comment, it's not the (probable) outsourcing that bothers me. It's the fact that, whether Delta had me talking to someone from Outer Fredonia who learned English yesterday or to the guy who grew up next door to me, their script is such that it's more or less their policy not to help me.