On traveling… and complaining…
I find that too many of my travel posts, particularly when flying, are complaints… this begs the question… am I a whiner… I don’t think so… I fly… a lot… I find many airlines don’t provide the service they think they do… I fly enough to see it… Most of the time I find the experience humorous… I expect issues when traveling… I expect stupid human tricks from my fellow passengers…. Mostly I laugh and find something to blog about…
I was recently surprised when Southwest didn’t do well… I didn’t expect it… I wrote a letter to Southwest complaining… I got a personalized response, not a “Dear (fill in name here) We are sorry and here is a free pound of coffee” (The lovely Tina sent these out many years ago during a summer job for a San Francisco Coffee company… the same letter for any complaint…) No, instead the writer of the letter I got from SWA (someone, a human, not a computer) addressed each of my complaints… They heard my complaints… a good response… They didn’t say they would address any of them… (that might have been over-promising) but at least I was heard. My next (SWA) flight wasn’t great either… Is SWA losing it? I suspect not, but they are getting old (they turned 40 years old on Saturday…) and may be having a crisis of middle age… we all do… we mostly don’t admit it…
I will fly Southwest again… not next time… next time… 48 hours or so from now, I am flying on Delta….
I was not surprised about recent news reports of a United Airlines computer melt down and resulting chaos… Their computer system melted down… passengers were deleted… they couldn’t calculate load and balance… It was a big problem for about 2 hours… Their customer service was not up to the task… It made the news… people were angry…
I expect poor service and chaos on United… They have been known to break guitars… there is a song about it… no, three songs… As stated earlier, I will pay more NOT to fly United…
While writing this blog post I did a Google search (The lovely Tina works for Google) on “United meltdown”… I found some surprising results… my favorite was a blog… a tech blog… a professional blog on ZD.net by Paul Greenberg… complaining about United, complimenting Marriott… well thought out…
Travel tip of the day… Many airports provide free internet… some limit the amount of time on line… At SFO they give you 45 minutes… If you use up your minutes, log out… close your browser… you may want to clear out any cookies… then log in again… you get another 45 free minutes of internet bliss…
Finally… A fun story… from the SF Chronicle here via SF Gate… an article… an article on the front page of the Sunday travel section… on Traveling with toys… An “only in San Francisco” story… about flying with sex toys…”If you pack a vibrator, don't get shaken by TSA”
You can read it for yourself… It may be better that way… generally the lovely Tina and I leave the hand cuffs at home… it is better that way.
Good night…
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