Travelocity lost the tickets that I bought from them.

Now, given Travelocity’s customer service guarantee:

the Travelocity Guarantee is our commitment to you that everything about your booking will be right, or we’ll work with our partners to make it right, right away… Human error happens; nobody’s perfect - but in those rare cases that we make a mistake you can count on us to take responsibility for it.

…you might expect that they graciously accepted responsibility, and issued me a new set of tickets, right? Wrong. Travelocity’s best solution is that I “arrive at the airport one or two hours earlier than usual, file a ‘lost ticket claim’ form, and pay either a fee (around $100) or the full price of the tickets,” which they would refund later, once I’ve sent them the receipts (so, 4-12 weeks later.)

This, to me, is bullshit. I have spoken to 4 supervisors in the past week on the phone, all of whom apparently are using the same customer service script, and have emailed their “guarantee” division of their customer service department multiple times, only to receive a form reply back (after three to four hours) containing identical paragraphs, and absolutely no offer to make right. None of the people I spoke to seemed to care in the least; all were obviously members of an outsourced call center, probably receive less than $10/hr, and probably speak to dozens or hundreds of angry customers a day - why should they care?

The amazing thing is that a similar thing happened to me recently with Orbitz (who also suck) - an hour after receiving the ticket confirmation email, I received an email saying the tickets could not be reserved, that my credit card would not be charged, and to please try again. I did. Orbitz charged me anyway, and I went through perhaps 8 people on the phone before I even found somebody willing to agree that it was their fault (one customer service lady even told me that I “should have ignored the second email,” i.e. the one received an hour after the confirmation, telling me that my credit card would not be charged.) They offered to apply the ticket value to a future purchase with Continental, and a $50 discount on future transactions with Orbitz. Since the whole point of using these sites is to compare prices across airlines, I replied back threatening legal action, and they eventually folded — hanging on to my money for a further 14 days, and needing two emails before it finally showed up again in my account.

What is the problem with these companies? Here’s my theory - they’re concerned (obviously) about the bottom line. Because of that, they don’t pay as well as they could; their Sr people migrate over time to better paying positions. They outsource, temp, and contract out work where possible; these people do not really care about the company and provide lousy service and product. Since they pay so low, the full time hires they do make are Jr to mid level. Bugs creep into the system. Morale falls. Customers are just a pain in the ass to deal with.

Anyway, enough of a rant. My message is simply this: don’t use Travelocity, and don’t use Orbitz. If everything goes right, you’ll be OK, but they suck when things go wrong.

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The Pope, who is regarded as some sort of divine intercessionary by hundreds of millions if not billions of gullible people, is dying like a weak old man. No chariots of fire whisking him off to heaven; no miraculous flash and bang…just a feeding tube and a whimper. Dozens of other Europeans with martyr complexes built from dogma are right now lining up to take his place, and hundreds of millions if not billions of gullible people will misplace their faith upon the new guy. Lest anyone forget, past popes have been murderers, thieves, adulterers and corrupt politicians. (Hey, there’s an idea: Tom Delay for pope! Is he even Catholic?)

In related news, a spokesbear for the International Union of Bears has announced that they will continue to shit in the woods during this difficult period.

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Now that Terri has been martyred, and Scott is sentenced, TV and newspaper editors across the US are frantically looking for another meaningless human interest story. Here’s some ideas:

• Bring back Elian Gonzalez! Gonzalez, who was returned to Cuba after Madeleine Albright personally held him up at gunpoint, or something, is probably around 10 by now. If he hasn’t gotten into pot yet (yes, Culkin, I’m talking about you), he’s probably still cute as a button. The Navy Seals could invade his private school to remove him from the cruel propagandistic reaches of the evil dictator Castro, and bring him back to the US, where he could star in his own sitcom. (Elian in the Middle?)
• More focus on Jacko! The wacko monkey luvvin’ pop-star freak’s trial is bound to go his way, but in the meantime there’s plenty of angles to be worked. Interview school-children who have never met the man to see if they were molested! Feature outraged parents who fear Jackson’s influence on the nation.
• Dig up another murder trial with soap opera characteristics. Victim should be sympathetic, i.e. female, and ideally pregnant so that space can be used comparing the sad saga to the Petersons’.
• Find out what the Bush twins are up to. Ideally find photos of them mud-wrestling.
• Charles & Camilla? Admittedly they’re British, but they are royal. It’ll play pretty well.
• Focus on Terri for another three weeks. Work the funeral for all it’s worth.

Your ideas are sought! The nation’s media must be saved!

Update:

• Puppies! Everybody loves puppies!
  

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From the local news section of the Contra Costa Times, 03-22-05:
“Kathleen Wilson lay on the kitchen floor of her Fairfield home for nearly two years after she died, her son and husband stepping around the remains as they prepared meals and went on with daily life.”
I understand, that given enough time, people can get used to the strangest surroundings. If, in order to get a sandwich, you’d have to step around a squishy, reeking mass of decomposing flesh in Mom’s clothes, you’d do so, if you’re hungry enough. I personally would either move or dine out, but hey, suit yourself.
But what about the bugs?? How come they didn’t all die of some sort of disease?
“Fairfield police discovered the corpse and arrested the woman’s son, Jack Wilson, 58, Friday afternoon on suspicion of elder abuse. A concerned neighbor had reported not seeing the woman in about a year.”
She waited ‘about a year’ to express her concern?
“Wilson told police his mother had fallen in the kitchen sometime in mid-2003 and had remained there ever since, said Fairfield police Sgt. Mike Johnstone. “He says he left her in the kitchen and tried to feed her and take care of her for a couple weeks before she died,” Johnstone said. Wilson has been cooperative with investigators. Police said he understood his mother was dead, but why he never tried to get her medical attention or report her death remains unclear.”
I know how that is. Things come up, you get busy, the persistent, pesky things get dealt with, everything else falls between the cracks, or on the kitchen floor. It took me five years to get my driver’s license, and then only because I had to. A corpse, silent and peacefully decomposing - why bother?
“Peggy Osborn, program manager for the Attorney General’s Office’s elder abuse public awareness campaign, said cases like Kathleen Wilson’s shock the public but happen more often than most people realize.”One thing about elder abuse, neglect or isolation is that it thrives on silence,” she said. “What would have happened if someone had picked up a phone a year ago?””
Considering the headline “Fairfield woman lay dead in family kitchen nearly 2 years“, they probably would have found a corpse.

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