There’s a saying in business “Treat a customer well and if you’re lucky they’ll tell a few people; treat them badly and they’ll tell everyone they know.” Well, you’ve got to love the blogosphere! Now can I tell everyone about my airline ticket buying trauma Wednesday – and somehow that makes me feel better about it.
Once I got the green light for NIH from Kevin, who by the way just called to tell me the PFT will be at noon next Thursday, I rushed to buy my airline ticket. It’s only a week before I am to travel, and I wanted to at least get the seven-day advanced purchase fare. The Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome Network works very hard for every single dime. Fundraisers like garage sales and car washes are our primary source of funding, and an airline ticket is a heck of a lot of nickel and dime items at a garage sale. I don’t want to pay even a quarter more than I have to. To be honest, I very much wish I could afford to just buy the ticket myself and donate the fare, but right now I just don’t have the resources to do it.
So, with frugality as my goal, I spent my lunch hour searching the internet for the best fare. I wanted to try to buy it through Expedia.com if at all possible because Expedia is an iGive.com merchant, thus a portion of the purchase price would be donated to the HPS Network.
With the price of gas being high, and the demand for tickets into the Washington, D.C. area, lets just say flying to the nation’s capital isn’t cheap. I was also hoping to travel in the late afternoon or evening to minimize the time I’d have to take from work. I plugged away, changing times, changing airports hunting for the best fare.
Finally I found an itinerary that was both convenient and reasonably priced. SCORE!!! So, I tediously plugged in all my personal details, credit card information etc. I clicked “buy ticket.” And I waited.
The computer whirred, and a message came back that the price of the ticket had changed. Boy did it change! It went up about $400! Nope – no way would I pay that. So, I started over. I started over not once, but three times. Each time, after all that work, the message came back that the price of the ticket I’d selected changed – and it would change by hundreds of dollars! After completely wasting an hour of my life, I gave up.
I found a utility on Yahoo! that will search all of the travel sites for you and find the cheapest deal. Brilliant! I plugged everything in again, and whalla, the perfect ticket appeared for an even cheaper price than I’d seen on Expedia. And even better, it was my favorite airline – Midwest Express. I was like a pig in slop! Ecstatic after what was by now well more than my hour lunch break, I purchased the ticket. I felt relieved – that task done!
I got home and logged into my personal e-mail expecting to find my ticket confirmation. To my horror, there was an e-mail from Cheaptickets.com telling me that my ticket would be purchased after they confirmed it’s availability with the airline. What? Funny me. When I clicked on “purchase ticket now”, that’s what I thought I did. They said they’d get back to me in 24 hours. Great! In 24 hours the ticket price would shoot up several hundred dollars. From my research earlier in the day, I knew there wouldn’t be any last-minute price cutting. The planes were full.
Irritated, I tried to call Midwest Express just to see if they had me in their system. The wait time, due to large call volumes, was 20 minutes. So, I prowled the Cheaptickets.com Web site for an actual, live-person phone number. I eventually found it, but not under the customer service section, interestingly enough. I called. I waited. I waited some more. I waited 38 minutes according to the clock on my phone.
Finally a real person came on the line. I explained my situation. He plugged everything into his computer. Relief. Yes, I did have a real ticket. Thank God! It only took nearly three hours all together.
At least I got on Midwest Express, however. I love this airline. I love it because it’s the only airline where every time I get on a flight, I’m sure that I’m not going to be crammed into some tiny seat practically in someone else’s lap. I know that my long legs will actually fit between the seats, and that when I arrive at my destination, my knees won’t be black and blue from being crammed into the back of the seat in front of me.
Granted, I’m not skinny, but there are tons of people out there larger than me. And yes, I’m tall for a girl, but there are plenty of people over 5’10” that can surely feel my pain. Of course price is the overriding factor when I’m buying a ticket, especially when I’m going somewhere to represent HPS – but I’d be willing to pay $10 to $20 bucks out of my own pocket to not be in pain by the time I arrive at my destination from being tied up like a pretzel.
As for Cheaptickets.com, they did have the cheapest fare. But, man, would I have been mad if the ticket hadn’t materialized.
Once I got the green light for NIH from Kevin, who by the way just called to tell me the PFT will be at noon next Thursday, I rushed to buy my airline ticket. It’s only a week before I am to travel, and I wanted to at least get the seven-day advanced purchase fare. The Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome Network works very hard for every single dime. Fundraisers like garage sales and car washes are our primary source of funding, and an airline ticket is a heck of a lot of nickel and dime items at a garage sale. I don’t want to pay even a quarter more than I have to. To be honest, I very much wish I could afford to just buy the ticket myself and donate the fare, but right now I just don’t have the resources to do it.
So, with frugality as my goal, I spent my lunch hour searching the internet for the best fare. I wanted to try to buy it through Expedia.com if at all possible because Expedia is an iGive.com merchant, thus a portion of the purchase price would be donated to the HPS Network.
With the price of gas being high, and the demand for tickets into the Washington, D.C. area, lets just say flying to the nation’s capital isn’t cheap. I was also hoping to travel in the late afternoon or evening to minimize the time I’d have to take from work. I plugged away, changing times, changing airports hunting for the best fare.
Finally I found an itinerary that was both convenient and reasonably priced. SCORE!!! So, I tediously plugged in all my personal details, credit card information etc. I clicked “buy ticket.” And I waited.
The computer whirred, and a message came back that the price of the ticket had changed. Boy did it change! It went up about $400! Nope – no way would I pay that. So, I started over. I started over not once, but three times. Each time, after all that work, the message came back that the price of the ticket I’d selected changed – and it would change by hundreds of dollars! After completely wasting an hour of my life, I gave up.
I found a utility on Yahoo! that will search all of the travel sites for you and find the cheapest deal. Brilliant! I plugged everything in again, and whalla, the perfect ticket appeared for an even cheaper price than I’d seen on Expedia. And even better, it was my favorite airline – Midwest Express. I was like a pig in slop! Ecstatic after what was by now well more than my hour lunch break, I purchased the ticket. I felt relieved – that task done!
I got home and logged into my personal e-mail expecting to find my ticket confirmation. To my horror, there was an e-mail from Cheaptickets.com telling me that my ticket would be purchased after they confirmed it’s availability with the airline. What? Funny me. When I clicked on “purchase ticket now”, that’s what I thought I did. They said they’d get back to me in 24 hours. Great! In 24 hours the ticket price would shoot up several hundred dollars. From my research earlier in the day, I knew there wouldn’t be any last-minute price cutting. The planes were full.
Irritated, I tried to call Midwest Express just to see if they had me in their system. The wait time, due to large call volumes, was 20 minutes. So, I prowled the Cheaptickets.com Web site for an actual, live-person phone number. I eventually found it, but not under the customer service section, interestingly enough. I called. I waited. I waited some more. I waited 38 minutes according to the clock on my phone.
Finally a real person came on the line. I explained my situation. He plugged everything into his computer. Relief. Yes, I did have a real ticket. Thank God! It only took nearly three hours all together.
At least I got on Midwest Express, however. I love this airline. I love it because it’s the only airline where every time I get on a flight, I’m sure that I’m not going to be crammed into some tiny seat practically in someone else’s lap. I know that my long legs will actually fit between the seats, and that when I arrive at my destination, my knees won’t be black and blue from being crammed into the back of the seat in front of me.
Granted, I’m not skinny, but there are tons of people out there larger than me. And yes, I’m tall for a girl, but there are plenty of people over 5’10” that can surely feel my pain. Of course price is the overriding factor when I’m buying a ticket, especially when I’m going somewhere to represent HPS – but I’d be willing to pay $10 to $20 bucks out of my own pocket to not be in pain by the time I arrive at my destination from being tied up like a pretzel.
As for Cheaptickets.com, they did have the cheapest fare. But, man, would I have been mad if the ticket hadn’t materialized.
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