Marvelous Marv

Just wanted to hear if I’m the only one.

I attempted to take a trip via USAir this weekend. Had some family matters in Oregon.

I bought my tickets in July with USAir. I knew they were in bankruptcy, but they were functioning, and it looked like Delta was about to go INTO bankruptcy, which is much more disruptive.

I guess USAir and United have merged. To GREATLY abbreviate the story, United said that although my return e-tickets said “Confirmed,” I didn’t have seats on the airplane. What one agent (the one that didn’t lie to me) told me was that they routinely oversell their planes by ten to twenty percent.

I spent an hour and a half two days prior to my return flight talking to “Tom.” I think his name was probably Rajneesh. Neither he, nor one other agent whom I couldn’t understand, or a person he SAID was his manager was willing to e-mail me written confirmation, although they were happy to swear on their mother’s graves that I had tickets. They just didn’t want to put it in writing. Actually, that may have been true—I had tickets; they just wouldn’t allow me to board their plane.

So in between their trying to blame my travel agency for changing my flight schedule, I requested seats on another airline. They said there was no plane with an empty seat leaving from that airport and going to my home state. When I left the desk, I picked up my cell phone and bought four tickets on Jet Blue to get home.

When I got there, two of my bags were missing. The lost baggage agent was so arrogant and argumentative (tried to blame Jet Blue for the bags that United lost) that after he started yelling, I finally called airport security. It was remarkable how much his attitude improved at that point.

I have left out a great many things I will add if there's any interest.

Anybody else want to post travel horror stories, or better yet, any effective means to force USAir or United to reimburse me for passage on Jet Blue?

I may swing by the “Ask the Lawyer” area, too.

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"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher