Smell the Roses? What Roses?

One of my pet peeves are people who call from work and want "information". Shouldn't they be working while at work???? Instead we are forced to wait while they take phone calls and wait on customers and in general conduct business while we sit here. That's just rude. And if you are so busy you cannot wait until you are home to look into travel, then you don't have time to travel. Cut something out of your live. A good place to start would be rudeness.

Whaaa???

Another agent told me this story:

A woman calls up and wants to know why her 8 year old son can't stay in the room with her. She was reading the policies and it said you must be 21 years old to check in....

Names Will Never Hurt me....

I had a woman today who wanted an evening flight for the vacation she was booking online. Now mind you she was having me look up all the information for her so she could turn around and book it on the website and save the $25.00 booking fee. There were no evening flights on the day she wanted to travel. I told her the different options such as try another day, come back to it later to see if any flights had been added. That kind of thing. Nothing made her happy. She kept asking me to look again and I kept telling her there were no evening flights available. Finally she called me a bitch and demanded to speak to a supervisor. Not gonna happen. What you will get is a dial tone.

You Moron

No matter how many times you insist that the flight or the hotel was there on the website yesterday or even an hour ago, if it is not there now it's GONE! There is nothing we can do for you if you are such a moron that you figured the rooms or flights you wanted are unlimited. The flights only have so many seats and the hotels only have so many rooms. If you called the airline or hotel and they have availability then for crying out loud!! Book with them!!! If it's more money then boo hoo. That's what you get. Live with it.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

It really annoys me when someone asks a question and when they don't get the answer they want act like you are either stupid or making up an answer or just out and out lying about it. We have as most travel sites do, a low rate guarantee. The thing is you have to have already booked your reservation. Then at our discretion we will either let you cancel the reservation you made with us without penalty and rebook with the other company with the lower rate or we will pay you the difference in the rate.

Well guess what? Most of the time they will just let you cancel without penalty. It's cheaper than actually issuing you a check for the difference in price. That's what I tried to explain to my customer today. She told me she didn't WANT to cancel and I must be mistaken because it clearly states on the website we have a low rate guarantee. And she wanted to know why I thought it was a better idea to cancel?

Hmmm. I don't know I guess. Read the fine print.

My Other Passion

Aside from travel I have a genuine passion for animal rescue. I truly believe we define ourselves as humans by how we treat those creatures who depend on us. I am an advocate of animal rescue in general but have a soft spot in my heart for our domestic animals, cats and dogs and of course rats. (I know lots of people are saying ewwww to the last one).
A really good site is http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces;jsessionid=6659E6A056CAD694C367ED1D369408EF.ctg-b?siteId=3&link=ctg_ars_home_from_ars_shelterchallenge_leftnav_logo While you are there, click the tab and then look for the button that says "vote", upper right. There is a shelter that is run by one of the agents that works with me called SRL in Minneapolis Kansas, USA. Please vote. Vote every day. It's a small thing but would make a world of difference for this shelter.

Very Funny...

People get really possessive with the member rewards points they earn. Therefore there are restrictions about who can use them. If you are not authorized to spend the points you can't access them. You can spend money to rack up the points but unless you are authorized you cannot touch them. Simple enough concept, right? You would not believe the flack I get from people who have a secondary card who want to use the points who are not authorized to use them. I can book a reservation and charge the card but I cannot use the points to cover the cost.

One guy was livid that I would not let him use someone else points. He started to become belligerent and very insulting. I did my best to try and sooth his ruffled feathers and continued on with the reservation. As I got further into the reservation he got more and more agitated until he was becoming quite rude.

Part of the process of booking a reservation is asking for the billing address. So I ask for the address. He mumbles out something like Mumphlelump Street, so I ask him to spell it. Mumphlelump Street he said. So do you need me to spell "street" for you?

Wise guy.

I are a Teacher

Our children are screwed. I just priced out a flight hotel package for someone who said she was a teacher going to a teachers convention. She didn't have the proper authorizations to be able to use the reward points on her father's credit card so as a courtesy I gave her a ball park ration of points to dollars.

What I said was " If the flight and hotel for instance costs $300, it would take between 35,000 and 45,000 points to cover it."

She said "but the trip is $575.00. Didn't you just say it cost $575.? How will I know how much the points will cover? He has 100,000 points"

So I said. " I can't give you an exact figure because you are not authorized to use the points. But if the trip costs 300 dollars for instance, it would take between 35 thousand 45 thousand points to cover the cost."

She was clearly confused and again said "but you said the trip cost $575.00. How can I tell how much the points will cover?"

Like I said, our kids are screwed....