Text 30828, 106 rader
Skriven 2012-11-05 07:31:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: getting there? 511
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The first thing I heard out of the phone agent's mouth was
that it must have been my fault, I arrived at the gate too
late to board the flight. I was too shocked to scream. When
I eventually found a voice of any sort, I got her to look at
the record, which she did and discovered that I had already
been rebooked on that American flight, and why hadn't they
told me? Of course, by the time I found this out, it was too
late to go out of security, get my ticket endorsed at the
United desk, go over to the American desk, have it
revalidated, reenter security with no way to cut in line,
and get to the next plane.

My problem: There was now no way I could get to San Diego in
time for my flight out of there to Dallas, let alone get to
Lilli's birthday that evening, even for final toasts. So could
I go directly to Dallas? Oh, we can't usually do that, but
it's a special circumstance, and I'll go ask the supervisor.
Lengthy hold. Well, this isn't normally done, and your return
is from San Diego, and how are you going to catch that? I
assured her that I could get to San Diego on my own. She
continued to call supervisors - one of the saddest things
about the new United is that the line personnel have no
discretion to do helpful or commonsense things, and the
supervisors, probably ex-Cons, who were famously bad at
dealing with irregular operations, haven't been chosen for
their everyday common sense. I was on hold for a long time.

Meanwhile, there was the question of getting my ticket next
day changed from SAN-DFW-NRT to just DFW-NRT. I called
Lilli, who has some clout with American (here I am who hates
phones talking on two at once), and she said she'd do what
she could. Apparently by some miracle, she talked directly
to a supervisor who said it was okay, but when he heard that
the problem had been caused by United, he was reluctant to
do anything but was eventually persuaded to fix the ticket.
This took two calls, as they were cut off while he was
documenting the record, and by some other miracle, when she
called back, she got the same person on the other end. So if
I could get to Dallas on time, I was golden with upgrade
intact, but woe betide if not.

At some point the United reservation change was made, but I
had spent close to two hours on the horn. It took that long
to make a simple change of Chicago-San Diego to
Chicago-Dallas next day.

So there I was confirmed on this cramped little plane to
Chicago and thankful for it. The call center girl, once she
figured out the enormity of the incompetence that had
inconvenienced me, was both helpful and sympathetic. She
promised there would be someone waiting for me at the gate
in Chicago, so I could continue to be treated like the
slime, er, king that United thinks I am. Fat chance, said I
to myself cynically.

By this time it was past time for my rescheduled flight, the
last one of the day, and I was lucky that it was delayed by
an hour and half.

And so I was happy to get on a bumpy, smelly, crappy flight
on an admittedly less uncomfortable uncomfortable plane. And
instead of two wonderful United dinners I got none at all.

We made up no time, and so it was quite late when we landed,
and, big surprise, there was nobody to meet me at the gate.

I trooped over to customer service, fully expecting the very
tired-looking agents not to know what I was talking about.
When it was my turn I asked the guy to look up my record,
upon which he said, oh, yeah, I was supposed to meet you at
the gate but was too busy. He had already printed out a
voucher for the Hilton and some food coupons, so I went away
reasonably mollified.

The Hilton was not expecting me. It's an enormous hotel,
though, so there was no problem putting me into a pretty
nice room with a dazzling view of the garage, which is
remedied by two sets of heavy wood French doors, the outer
ones solid, the inner ones equipped with frosted glass
windows. A somewhat classy solution to an eyesoricious
problem.

As I'd been told the kitchen closed at 0030, and it was well
past 11, I hightailed down to the bar, and good thing I did,
as they had decided to close it down at 0000, as business was
relatively slow. I got in in time for a burger and a Sam
Octoberfest, which chewed up some of my food coupons. The
burger was large and done rare, quite good actually, and the
beer improved my mood a bit. I sat next to a couple who had
been even worse inconvenienced than I had - they had I
believe $60 or $80 in chits, and as the mister flashed them,
I felt compelled to ask what heinous thing United had done
to them to give them all those: they'd been forced under
apparently similar circumstances to misconnect on a flight
to Dublin, so they had lost a day of whatever they were
going to do, in exchange for spending a delightful day in a
city they had no intention of visiting in the first place.
In the rain.

I decided to save my other coupon for breakfast, not needing
another beer to sleep. The Hilton bed was pretty nice, and
too bad I didn't have much time to enjoy it.

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