Outsourcing Sucks

Yesterday was a crap day. After my workout, (completed at 6:30am), things pretty much went downhill. Suffice it to say, short-staffing and other adult issues did not make for a pleasant work day. Add an over-flowed toilet and a few bathroom accidents, and I was ready for a drink when I came home at 4:30.

Drink I did not do however, I needed to switch some plane reservations we had made. Ha! L and I are headed to Montana for a wedding this summer. He thought the wedding was on Saturday....turns out it's on Sunday, at 2pm. Our flight leaves at 2:40pm on Sunday. So I called the nice folks at Travelocity, to see about changing that flight, and adding a night to our hotel stay. Wouldn't they be thrilled to help? Afterall, I'm extending our trip. Isn't travel what they are all about?

I spent a long time on hold....I realize now it is because my call was probably travelling around the world to somewhere in India.

"Hello, thank you for calling travelocity,my name is Rishi (hint #1) may I have your name and trip #?"

I give him the info.

"Thank you, Mrs. Michelle (hint #2) for calling today. How may I help you?"

"I need to add a day to my stay in Great Falls, MT."

"Oh. Mrs. Michelle, please visit our website at www.travelocity.com to make an entirely new reservation for the next day."

"I can do that for the hotel, but what about the plane ticket?"

"Mrs. Michelle, the plane ticket cannot be changed. You must fly on Sunday, June 26th."

"but I have to stay one more day, I need to fly on Monday."

"Mrs. Michelle,you have purchased an outstanding value, the plane tickets and hotel stay for only $748. To provide exceptional value to our highly esteemed customers, the plane tickets cannot be changed."

"But I need to stay one more day. I can't fly home on Sunday."

"Mrs. Michelle,you have purchased an outstanding value, the plane tickets and hotel stay for only $748. To provide exceptional value to our highly esteemed customers, the plane tickets cannot be changed."

"Well then I will have to cancel the whole trip and buy tickets someplace else."

"The cancellation charge for this trip is $748. To provide exceptional value to our highly esteemed customers, the plane tickets cannot be changed."

"But I just want to change it by one day. I can't make that flight on Sunday."

"Mrs. Michelle,you have purchased an outstanding value, the plane tickets and hotel stay for only $748. To provide exceptional value to our highly esteemed customers, the plane tickets cannot be changed."

Then I did something I'm not very proud of in hindsight. But my guess is that Rishi is used to it. I"m sure that with crap-ass policies like no refunds/no cancellations, this happens all the time.

I very calmly said, "THIS IS FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE!" and hung up.

Now if this call was monitored for quality assurance, I suppose Rishi will win, and I will not get one iota of help from Travelocity. Afterall, I was rude, but damnit, he was reading from a script! I was not treated as a "highly esteemed customer", I was treated like Dory in "find Nemo"--repeatedly told things becuase I have no short-term memory!

Now I suppose it's on to the airline...one-way tickets home cost $500 a pop. Perhaps they will have some advice for us. Surely they get calls from people who get screwed like this--won't they take this opportunity to be the good guy? Ha! For some reason, I think my logic is flawed. We are SOOO screwed. All for a wedding for people I don't know (L's friends), who are getting married becuase they are pregnant. We'll be lucky if they are still married by the baby's first birthday. Yeah, what a great way to drop $2K ....now if the wedding was in Hawaii or something, I could see it. But Great Falls hardly makes it a destination wedding.

I followed this fiasco up with locking my keys in my trunk (which i didn't discover til this morning), and then falling asleep during the Apprentice.

Thankfully, after finding my keys this morning, today has been a bit better. And tonight L and i are looking at houses (which we love to do) and going out to dinner, so things are on the upswing. We are saving a call to the airlines for another day....