My pace back and forth down the short narrow hallway quickened. My face was hot. Tears welled in my eyes. My voice faltered. Anger and frustration trickled to the surface. The customer service representative on the phone had just redirected me back to the Delta.com website and instructed me to cancel all my flights and start over. She misled me and promptly got off the phone.
It’s been a day and a half now. My frustration is a mile wide, its current swift. The levies can not and should not hold this back. I’m screaming inside. I’m going to shout out loud.
A week ago I was physically exhausted, after schlepping a backpack all over the North Cascades. Now I feel like a caged animal. I’m in need of a lung-searing, gut busting long run.
Three days ago my grandmother passed away. Today there’s a small, private memorial service for her at my grandparents home in coastal North Carolina. The following day I have to head back to Washington state for another Alpine Endeavors Cascades trip.
The fiery chafe lies with the airlines and my need to change my travel plans. I was scheduled to fly on Delta Airlines from Newark to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to Seattle.. I’m headed to North Carolina for the memorial service and it’s not practical to fly out of Newark at 7:20 the next morning. What I wanted to do was skip the flight from Newark to Atlanta and check in for my flight in Atlanta.
I initially tried to change my flights online. I carefully selected the proper flight (if nothing else, as a climbing guide and risk manager by trade, I am meticulous). After entering and submitting all of my information there was an error and the Delta website instructed me to go back in my browser. Upon re-entering my confirmation number the website indicated that BOTH flights had been canceled.
I received no confirmation email and as far as I could tell the transaction had not been completed. However, according to the system I had been charged $150 so that Delta could sell my space on those flights.
I called Expedia to see if they could help. The customer service representative there said that flights had been changed within the Delta system and there was nothing he could do. He told me he would transfer me to Delta and put me on hold indefinitely. Shit mofo.
I called Delta to explain my situation and the woman on the other end was both unempathetic and unfriendly. I had clearly cancelled my flights and that was all there was to it. The system doesn’t make mistakes; it was my fault. She grilled me about the name of the funeral parlor as proof that there had been a death in the family. After putting me on hold at least 4 times for 3 minutes at a time she came back on the phone and told me to go online cancel all of my flights and start over. What? And get charged $150 more to cancel my return flights too, only to be left with a few dollars credit from the original purchase price? I asked her to stay on the phone while I did what she was telling me. “Just enter your confirmation code on the homepage and you can take it from there” she told me. There was nowhere on the homepage to do that. This woman was lying to me, and trying to shift my heat off of her. Where was her empathy? Her understanding? She was a soulless automaton. Near as I can tell, and right about now, she’d make a pretty good punching bag. Gloves off.
I was visibly and audibly upset, and thankfully my partner stepped in and got back on the phone with Delta. She explained the situation to a different, and more understanding yet equally as powerless, customer service representative. They were able to reinstate my original flights.
After four hours, at the end of an already long and psychologically punishing day I was back to square one. I would try again in the morning.
Yesterday morning I got back on the phone with Delta. How hard could it be to change my reservation so that I could check in in Atlanta? Delta could fill an extra seat on the Newark-Atlanta flight and I could attend my grandmother’s memorial service and then fly from North Carolina to Atlanta where I could check in for my flight to Seattle. This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to ask for, does it?
Well, it turns out it is. The customer service representative was kind enough to waive the change fee for me. It was going to cost me $580 without the flight change fee not to fly from Newark to Atlanta. So I was being penalized for not flying? It sure seems that way to me.
I wasn’t going to pay $600 not to fly from Newark to Atlanta. I had already purchased a one way ticket from NC to Atlanta and this would put my expenses for the two day detour at nearly $850. Instead I purchased another one-way ticket from Atlanta to Seattle and decided to be done with the whole thing. I needed to stop stressing about this.
It’s all done with now. I have the plane tickets and I will make it to both the memorial service and to Mts. Shuksan and Rainier afterward. The whole situation, however, has left me with grave doubts about the system that we live, work and play in. I’m not a fatalist or a huge cynic. I don’t believe that we’re going to destroy ourselves before our generation is dead and gone. I am really feeling like things need to change though.
How can someone (a customer service representative) willingly agree to a job with the airlines where they are so powerless to do the right thing? How does one do it? You’d have to put a gun to my head before I’d do that, especially right now. And the people who design the programs that calculate costs based on demand rather than people’s real needs – they’ve sold out, sold their souls to the devil. And the supervisors who can’t override the computer when a customer service representative comes to them with a unique situation like a death in the family? You must hate yourself.
The only conclusion I have come to is that these people have either given up all hope that things can be different (which is sad) or don’t care that things are the way they are (which is fucking lame). If the guide service that I work for provided the style of service that many of these large corporations that are “too big to fail” provide we would promptly put ourselves out of business. We would disappear. But that hasn’t happened to the airlines. I haven’t had a good flight experience in 4 years. Out of half a dozen flights per year, none of them are pleasant? What does that tell you about the quality of service they’re providing?
After this incident I’m left with more questions than answers. And I’m not going to let this frustration subside so quickly. There are so many things that we should try to be “zen” about. Just let them go and get on with your life. I just don’t feel this is one of them. We need to start making changes. Voting is lame. It just doesn’t work. What we need to do is vote with our money.
So that’s where I’m at. Each day I get more focused about it too. Spend your dollars as locally as possible. Give your money to the people you want to have it. Buy local food and clothing from local stores. Ride your bike. Drive a smaller car and less often. And don’t fly unless you need to. Definitely make sure it isn’t Delta.
