I don’t know if you’ve ever flown on a bargain airline to save money, but this can be very problematic.
I have friends who will only fly business class, obviously because it’s more comfortable. The seats tend to be bigger, softer and you get a nice curtain separating you from the economy masses.
The curtain exists so those of us squished in the back, forced to eat a bag of peanuts we found in the bottom of our purses, won’t be able to see those of you enjoying yourself in business class.
But that’s OK, because long ago, I made a pact with myself to give up a few hours of comfort in exchange for saving money. This is a necessary deal because it’s the only way I can afford to travel.
I’ve become an expert on how to use credit card points and miles to buy my tickets. I had planned to take my family to Costa Rica in April, flying on Avianca Airlines. We’d been to Costa Rica twice before and love it there.
When I took the kids to Maui a few years ago, afterward they reported that they liked it, but prefer Costa Rica “because of the animals.” There are lots of wild animals in Costa Rica, and none of them can eat you. Sloths, various types of monkeys, and so forth. Since it costs virtually the same to fly to Costa Rica as Hawaii and it’s the same five hours in the air, I agreed we could go.
Luckily (or unluckily, as the case may be), the airline was having a big sale on seats purchased with miles from their Lifemiles loyalty plan, so I was able to buy tickets for everyone with credit card points, only paying for the taxes in cash, which came to around $500. We’d flown Avianca, a Colombian airline, before and found it fine.
Unfortunately, in February, my daughter Curly Girl decided that she couldn’t afford to take off work for our trip. This was highly annoying to me — the person paying for the whole jaunt — because (a) the whole thing had been her idea and (b) she’d had months to save up and consider this issue.
Even though I was mighty miffed, I realized I could at least cancel the flights and get my points and money back.
Some of you experienced travelers are already starting to smirk at my naivete. Yep, that’s when the problems began. Nowadays, it’s nearly impossible to get hold of a living human being anymore. It’s like they either hide their phone numbers or leave you on hold for so long that you could have become pregnant and given birth while you’re waiting.
It took me three phone calls to three different places to cancel the flights and get my miles refunded to my account. “Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve called the number for left-handed people. You need to call the number for right-handed people. Here’s the number.”
But the good news is that after several hours of trying, I eventually did get my Lifemiles refunded. The bad news is that I still haven’t been refunded for the money I paid in taxes. Somehow, I did manage to find the secret phone number for customer service and figure out the exact sequence I needed in the phone menu to get a live human being on the line. I felt this was quite an achievement.
But before I could pat myself on the back, this human told me I could apply for the cash refund easily online by following several steps that he outlined for me. I begged him to do it for me. No, I had to do it online. Obviously, I wrote down his instructions and followed them carefully. Only to have the website tell me that I couldn’t perform that function online, and I’d have to call customer service. “I already called customer service!,” I wanted to shout at the computer, but of course that would be futile.
So then, I called customer service and went through all the menu options again, waited on hold again and then explained the situation. Again, I went online. And nope.
After reading every inch of the website with the intensity of a theology student studying the Gospels, I found a customer relations resolution page, which promised to fix problems. I filled out a form with the entire long saga and submitted it, and waited. Nada.
I submitted a complaint to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation Office of Aviation Consumer Protection. On July 13, I received an email from the airline telling me they’d received my complaint and would be responding to me “as soon as possible.”
It’s nearly September, and I’m still waiting.