It was 12:45 am and we were slowly gathering near the boarding gate anticipating call to board soon.. and that's when the dreaded announcement came in..
The manager announced that they could not take the flight because one of the attendants is "fatigued" and the flight has been rescheduled to 11am the following morning.. 10 hours of waiting and with so much of frustration we stormed the counter guy for an explanation .. Was he not aware that the attendant coming from Baltimore would be exhausted? Or if the attendant was going to be exhausted why did he/she even start from Baltimore? And to add to the customer's woes they were still not ready to refund the ticket..
We were asked to contact the customer care which was open only from 4 am. There were lots of stranded passengers and they could not even find hotel accommodations for them. Simply they mentioned to get it reimbursed to the tune of $300.
We stood there thinking.. tired from the whole experience.. and expenses.. our hotel booking at Orlando already cost us $200 without us being there.. lost out rental car booking.. and to top it all.we had taken 3 day pass at Orlando Disney parks and we had lost a day already.. kids had gone to sleep with excitement of seeing Disney the next day.. that would be the biggest disappointment.. we could see some of the kids weeping while their parents frantically trying to find a hotel to pass the night..
We deliberated on canceling the whole trip as news on the hurricane irma hitting Florida was looming all over the news..
After few minutes of silence, the Aloha army started putting their heads together.. devised the next action plan and were determined to visit Disney .. some to keep their promises and others to see their kids happy again.
As we collected the baggage and were leaving the airport, here were few passengers struggling to get cabs to reach their hotels.. we offered them a ride but they already had the cabs booked and was on its way.. yet they appreciated our gesture towards helping them..
Our immediate plan was to call customer care and get our tickets fully reimbursed- for all the agony and frustration the Allegiant airlines caused, we were not willing to take another risk of flying through them the following day. The plan was to do a conf call at 4 in the morning and then call customer care.. but as we reached around 2 am, getting up at 4 was near to impossible.
It was 6 am on Sep 4th. Aloha army got into a conf call and whole conversation was spearheaded by Geetha.. detailing out the pain that we suffered and the loss we had already encountered.. it didn't take much long for the customer rep to agree to refund the full amount for all our tickets.. a silent victory amidst 15 hours of non stop anxiety..
Next plan was to book flights from Boston and a change of itinerary as we had to shift the trip by one more day .. which meant one more day off from work..
Aloha army found a suitable itinerary with Spirit airlines and with a $9 club membership, the prices turned out to be economical. Sponsor Siva once again took the lead in becoming a $9 club member..
Meanwhile Geetha called up the hotel guys to extend our stay to accommodate the extra two days..
Since all the prior bookings were in his credit card and was running close to its limit, I came forward to take it this time. With a restriction of only 6 tickets at a time , I booked it for Siva and Parthi family including the kids.. with all going well, I was about to book tickets for myself and my better half... and there came another twist...
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