Saturday, September 11, 2010

Traveling this summer...

has been such a challenge! I went to Phoenix last weekend. I was supposed to leave Saturday morning at 6am from the Arcata airport. I received a text from United on Friday night around 5pm saying my flight had been canceled and that I needed to call the 800 number to reschedule. I did that and they said the earliest flight they could get me on was at 2pm on Sunday. I said that was unacceptable because I paid for a flight on Saturday. They did find me a flight on Saturday at 5pm so I got to Phoenix at 9pm instead of 1pm.

When the United customer service representative was about done making my new reservations he said, "would you say that you are extremely satisfied with United's customer service?" Um nope, I was very unsatisfied! And I told him so! He put me on hold and came back to say that I would be receiving an email where I could choose from three types of "compensation" to make up for my dissatisfaction. Nice! I chose a $100 credit on my next United flight. Do I really want to fly United though?!

Good thing I had such a great time visiting the Eilertsens because getting home was an even bigger challenge! The flight from Phoenix left on time and actually arrived in San Francisco a few minutes early. I had a 3.5 hour layover there. Then my flight back to Arcata kept getting delayed by 15 or 30 minutes, several times, due to weather problems. Finally they completely canceled it!

They put me on stand-by for the next flight (which they thought would get canceled also) and gave me a confirmed seat on the first flight out the next morning. However, I didn't really think things looked too good so Andy and I decided that I should catch the airport shuttle bus to Santa Rosa. He would leave then (about 8:15) and come pick me up. I got on the bus about 8:45, headed for Santa Rosa. Our good friend, Matt Parlato, came to my rescue and picked me up in Rohnert Park about 9:45. We made a quick stop at their house and then we met Andy in Cloverdale.

Andy and I made it home about 2:30am. What a night! Thanks to Chet and Karen for having the kids and getting them to school the next day....

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