Hotwire sent me emails about “lower hotel rates” in Rosemont. So I found one I liked and booked it. When I received the hotel conformation it was in Elk Grove, Ill., not Rosemont. Now what? Can I get it changed?
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reservations
Now the airlines can change flights without even notifying customers. Could it possibly get worse? Christopher Elliott takes a look.
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This latest bout with the weather on the East Coast has highlighted the problems of running airlines at capacity without factoring in weather as an element. It has also shined a spotlight on airlines’ telephone support operations that were overwhelmed first, with requests for cancellations and changes to avoid the mess, then with passengers stuck at airports looking for a way home.
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Airlines should reveal all airfares and all ancillary fees at the same time and allow passengers to know the total cost of travel up-front so that they can compare prices between different airlines. Pricing information is the grease that makes the free market system work.
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A lot of hungry people read and commented on my recent 3-star Parisian dining experiences at Le Meurice and Guy Savoy. In case you’re ready to shell out the dough yourself for a once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience, I asked Michelin for a few tips on how to score a hard-to-get reservation at a top restaurant.
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When you’re airfare shopping, attractive prices can vanish in a split second. Just ask Jim Doll, a systems engineer in Atlanta, who recently tried to buy a ticket to San Francisco on AirTran Airways’ Web site. He found a one-way fare for just $130, but by the time he’d toggled over to Orbitz.com to see if he could do better there and then clicked back, the price had changed.
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By now I’m accustomed to all sorts of things that can go wrong in booking a room. The room with a view … of the office building next door. The ‘non-smoking room’ with the tell-tale smoky staleness that my asthmatic husband can sniff out, even if no one else can. (PSSST! Hotels, the non-smoking thing is mainly a benefit for folks more sensitive to such things than managers and maids, so a quick re-labeling won’t work). I’ve encountered mix-ups on how many beds are needed, or what floor or amenities a disabled guest requires.
I recently faced a new problem — no heat. My experience in the Land of Lakes was not just a matter of a missing ‘amenity,’ (heat) but also a matter of the near total indifference with which it was addressed.
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It’s always fun when I discover something really clever tucked away in a nuts-and-bolts website. Fairmont Hotels, not known as a hotbed of humor, but rather a place where many of the sultans, sheikhs and excellencies of the world choose to stay, has a simple drop-down menu in their reservation form that brought a smile to my face.
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Eurail passes these days aren’t what we baby boomers remember from back in the ’60s and ’70s and even the ’80s. I fondly remember when travelers could get on and off trains at will and the biggest decision was whether to buy a 1st-class or 2nd-class pass. Not any more. The world of rail travel in Europe has become much more complicated. Spontaneity has been squashed.
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Our transportation system has deteriorated to the levels of the most undependable third-world countries. The USA that once prided itself on on-time transport by air and rail, has slipped into a worsening spiral of schedules that aren’t worth the paper on which they are printed. And the state of customer service is just as catch-as-catch-can as the airline timetables.
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