Travel Blog April Archive

After spending hours yesterday and today planning a trip, I decide to book it via American Airlines. Their webpage was the easist to use and although the not the cheapest flight there was only one hotel needed for connections and not two. The result being that the overall trip cost and time was less.

Ok, time to make the reservation and I should have remebered from before. Since the flight shown was on American Airlines, LAN Peru and Copa/Aerorepublica, American doesn't allow you to make a reservational online and instead says:

Reservations containing one or more flights on airlines other than American Airlines, American Eagle and AmericanConnection must be purchased at time of booking and may not qualify for electronic tickets. Please select Purchase at the bottom of the page.

Now this gets into a stickly situation where they will require these paper tickets to be sent to my office in the United States (half way around the world) as that is where my credit card is billed.

Now the tickets can't possibly arrive by the time the flight is scheduled for. What is the purpose of these paper tickets but to offer frustration?

I just want to make the reservation and then PAY at their local office. Quick, and easy for me, and no hassles for the traveller who obviously won't be travelling with my credit card.

Last time I called reservations the ticket price was much higher. Today, although the 800# for reservations said that there is a $10 fee for make reservations via the telephone, no one actually answers the phone. In my country, the American Airlines office phone goes to voice mail.

So, I can't say how much higher in price the ticket will be making the reservation by phone besides the $10 fee.

Finally, someone answered at the local American Airlines office. The price quoted by aa.com was $704+ $91.10 taxes for a total of $795.10. The American Airlines office quoted $2317 (and I'm not worried whether that was with or without taxes). By my calculation the price for reserving by telephone is about $1522 more than online. I might not be very good at math, but I think that is a whee bit more than $10!

The most important aspect of doing business is providing a viable means for your customer to PAY YOU! I have $800 in my pocket ready to give to American Airlines. All they have to do is let me pay them!

Unfortunate for the investors in American Airlines, my money will be going to their competition this time... and maybe next time!

What is wrong with Travelocity.com?

It used to be that you could use a flexible dates search on Travelocity.com when you were starting from a foreign destination. It often produced silly results because it generally used USA Airlines that likes to route the flights through a US Airport regardless of efficiency.

It did a much better job showing you options for flights originating in the USA with a foreign destination. It was always useful for travel planning trips to Costa Rica.

Now, when you try to search for a flight from the USA to Costa Rica you get: No flight information available.

What you can do:
* Flexible date searches are only available for searches within the US and Canada.
* Try an Exact Dates search.

In my view that makes travelocity pretty pointless to use anymore.

Expedia Handles Payment for Hotel With Respect!

I recently make a hotel reservation for my wife to stay in New York City. Although I checked many places on the web, I decide to make the reservation through www.expedia.com.

The main reason was the combination of price and location. Many places were too difficult to deal with (the prices on the web were differnt than when you called, an answering machine to leave a message about availability, etc).

My preference is not to call anyone, but to do it all online.

When I made the reservation, Expedia was abundantly clear that my credit card would be charged the full amount of the hotel reservation the moment I made the reservation. Thank god!

Not only was the charge made immediately to my card, when my wife checked into the hotel there were no hassles. No request for a credit card, no request for a deposit. When she checked out it was just as easy as saying, good bye. No disclosed card numbers, no double charges, just the simple transaction that it is.

One reason I like the instant charging of my card for the full amount is that it avoid problems with credit limits in the future. On a recent trip to Brazil, the travel agency waited weeks and weeks to actually charge my card. Since the total cost of the trip was near my total credit limit, I was unable to use that card for anything until the travel agency charge posted.

I was also worried that if that charge posted too close to the trip date, I wouldn't be able to pay it off before the trip and wouldn't have the use of that card at all on the trip!

Expedia needs a thumbs up for first of all clearly informing their customers how the transaction will be handled and second for actually handling the transaction like they said it would be.