A Miserable Excuse for Customer Service
posted in Rantings |Damn.
It’s things like this that make me wonder what the heck I’m doing living in the basement and writing web pages. I haven’t really ranted in a while so I’m due. Stand back while I clear the bile from my ducts.
This 78 year old pensioner lived on her Social Security for ten years and still managed to save enough money to take the dream trip of a lifetime; she and a friend planned and booked a flight and then a cruise to Alaska. It looks like she paid her money directly to Princess Cruises.
This woman was scheduled for a trip to Anchorage, where the cruise would start, from Baltimore, to Minneapolis and then to Seattle, and then on to Anchorage. She made it to Minneapolis.
Things went downhill. The flight from Minneapolis to Seattle was delayed for two hours due to mechanical problems. We’ve all been there. It happens. So she missed her flight from Seattle to Anchorage. Then she had an opportunity to run from one end of SeaTac to the other — to be faced with a full airplane, and no room for these two elderly ladies. They raced to another plane, but that offered flight was booked too. Two people offered their seats to the elderly women but the flight attendants wouldn’t let them switch. So these two pensioners who saved for ten years for this trip of their dreams missed their boat when it left from Anchorage.
Northwest Airlines did great; they offered to send the women on another flight to a different port and they could meet up with their cruise. But they would have missed the glaciers — the part that made it all worth while for the ladies. And when the ladies decided they’d rather just go home because they were exhausted ( I guess waking up at five in the morning, taking two flights, racing across SeaTac can be kind of wearying ), Northwest flew them home for free. And then refunded their money for the flights that they didn’t use.
They refunded it to Princess Cruises. Another person might expect that something would be returned to the woman; at least the airfare for the trips, trips that weren’t even on Princess. This is what pisses me off.
But Princess spokeswoman Julie Benson said the woman will not get the refunds; Princess keeps the combined total of $559.80. The cruise line negotiates fares and special refund conditions with the airlines, Benson said, and the line’s policy is an industry standard :”The cancellation penalty applies to the cruise, airfare, prepaid excursions and pre- or post-cruise packages.” Because the woman hadn’t bought travel insurance (her friend did), she gets nothing back. Benson said it would be unfair to other passengers to do something different for just one.
So not only does this woman not get the dream trip she saved for ten years for, but she’s out the $2500 and the $550 for the airplane tickets. Damn.
