Join Me in Snarkville

Last year seemed to be the summer of travel for me, and shockingly this summer iss adding up to be no different.  I’m thrilled to say I’m going lots of different places, but yet again I’ll be busy this summer.  Well, I don’t know if everyone noticed but yesterday I declared it to “buy plane tickets day!”  Did you celebrate too? No?  Be happy you didn’t join me.

Dear Airline Company:

I fear that buying tickets from your company has become just too hard.  In this day and age where information is king and surfing the web is too easy for words, I think that your designers have sought out to make the most complicated system to purchase a single airline ticket.  If you did not have the lowest price by $100, I would have thrown my hands up in disgust.

I had to take the following steps to get the flights and price I wanted.  I began by doing a comparison of various airlines on a consolidator site, my favorite is Kayak; mostly because they don’t actually sell the tickets and send you off to another place, plus they seem to have contracts with most of the airlines (including Jet Blue).  Once I determined that I could find the flight I wanted on your site, I went and did a search with you.  Here’s where it became complicated.  You asked me if I wanted to search by Cabin or Fare Code.  What the???

I want CHEAP, I want you to return to the normal two class system you used to have — not a stupid two and half class system, where you sell cheap tickets but force us to sit in the back of the plane; you either save the front half of coach for your special flyers (which, FWIW, I have an ORIGINAL card with your program and tons of miles — hello, I should be special just because of that); and finally, a first class.  I don’t believe in the sub-class of coach.  I find it wrong on more levels than I count.

1. You have ultimately created 3 classes, but two of them are in essence no different as far as on board service goes, yet you are ‘charging’ more for one than the other.
2. You will no doubt board the first 12 rows of coach before the rejects with the cheap seats, which means that my knitting bag and I will be forced to whack each and every one of your “more special than I” members in the face as I struggle down the aisle.
3. In playing with your site a bit, I found that seats you claim as “reserved” if I buy the cheap rate code, mysterously open up when I buy the not so cheap code.  This is wrong, you are actually charging more for the same, too small for words, coach seat without food service.  What is next ‘that will $100 extra for the non-middle seat.’ or ‘I’ll need to see your boarding pass to see if you beverage service on this flight.’  Seriously.

Ok, so I could count them.  But this is just WRONG.  Also, when I tried to call you to find out what I might be able to do to get myself one of those precious exit rows, your phone was BUSY!  Your PHONE WAS BUSY.  I know you may have some money troubles, but seriously — hire some automated voice to put me on ignore for hours and hours, not ring busy.
So once I spent an hour navigating your site, picking my flights, choosing my seats from what wasn’t reserved for better passengers than me, I went to pay for my tickets.  Ok, done right?  Wrong.  There has been no fewer than 4 e-mails from you confirming my purchase, confirming my e-ticket, confirming I got your confirmation.  People, stop with the e-mails.  You and I will be seeing a lot of each other over the upcoming months, no need to overstay your welcome with me in first 24 hours.

Thank you,

The Queen

PS. Please let TSA know that I’m ok and while I travel with knitting needles, I’d rather not have the full body search for 1.5oz of make-up I might carry, ok?  Cool.

In other nearly un-related news, a member of the royal family poked her own eyes out after surfing for 3 hours to purchase 8 plane tickets on three airlines for something close to 15,000 miles of travel and that’s not even the whole summer’s worth. Before I tackle the next round of tickets, I’ll have to heal a little from this round.  I just don’t think that $200 tickets should be so hard.