15 April 2008

Retardedness in the airline industry

Dear airline industry morons,

First of all, let's not even get into how totally retarded it is that in this day and age of electronic everything and high paranoia security, you're still insisting on using paper tickets and ONLY paper tickets. What are you, stuck in the fracking stone ages? Do I need to spell out all the ways that this makes no sense whatsoever?

1. Do you seriously still make people mail back their tickets through the postal service every time there is an itinerary change? Can we say horrendously inefficient and expensive?

2. A paper ticket IS NOT "same as cash"! If it was same as cash, someone else would be able to use it. If it was same as cash, it could be used for other flights. But they can't and it can't. It can only be used by the named passengers with proper ID and only for the named flights.

3. I did not give you guys $1200 for the pieces of paper that the itinerary is printed on. I gave you the money in exchange for air travel. Which is confirmed in your fracking computer system. I can see it. You can see it. We all know it's there. We all know who's going to be doing the travelling. We all know that said travel has been paid for. I most fracking should not have to give you another 1200 fracking dollars to get more pieces of paper - and then be issued a refund (four! months!! later) when the original tickets are "unused."

How the frack are they going to get used? By the named passenger? Why the hell would they need TWO tickets for the SAME FLIGHTS? By a ticket thief? How are they going to get on a flight with stolen tickets? You don't think anyone would notice? Have you completely missed the security paranoia?

4. Oh yeah, sure. You're really going to refund my money (in four months!!) if those original tickets turn out unused. The fact that you declared bankruptcy last week just fills me with confidence on that promise.

5. What do you mean you keep no records whatsoever on when you mail out paper tickets? You have no idea when those tickets left your control and entered the postal system at all? How do we know that you even put them in the mail in the first place?

In short, I'm going to tell everyone I know that CheapTickets is a terrible travel agency, and Frontier Airlines is stuck in the stone ages (maybe that's why you guys went bankrupt!). Before this trip plan, I always used Travelocity (no problems ever!) and I'm going back to them from now on.

6 comments:

Random Michelle K said...

Maybe running really fast and flapping your arms would be a better option at this point?

Nathan said...

Add to that Delta and NorthWest merging and, yeah, that'll make things better.

John the Scientist said...

Hotels.com is another one to avoid.

Anne C. said...

My deepest sympathies, MWT. Technological backwardness (in the richest country in the world) peeves me to no end.

vince said...

Sadly, we live in a Dilbert world, and this is more proof. I rarely have to fly, but given that I live in Minnesota, that almost always means Northwest, and I buy my tickets online and print all I need online.

Frontier is a bunch of Luddites.

Nathan. Oh yeah, that's gonna help all us fliers.

Nathan said...

Vince, The other great thing about NorthWest is that every flight goes through either Minneapolis or Detroit, both of which completely suck. And then the connecting flight on the puddle jumper costs twice as much as the first leg of your trip.