I have crossed portions of this country by car, plane, train and bus. It is a bloody big country. Travelling across it can consume a lot of resources.I am also a realist in terms of the fact that companies need to make money. I am not surprised that the cost of travel with Air Canada, Via Rail, Greyhound and West Jet increases during peak times such as Christmas. But it is blatant price gouging when such companies increase their prices by 50% during peak times. It makes it even worse when the service is poor and when assistance is hard either hard to find or time consuming.
For the past few years I have had the joy of spending Christmas Eve and morning with my daughter and her family in Sudbury, Ontario and Christmas evening with my son and his family in Duncan, BC. Because I have needed to be back in time for school, the trip has been short and quite expensive. Consistently the plane connections have been problematic. In fact on every trip west, I have arrived late due to a missed connection. On at least two of those times, the staff at Air Canada suggested that I might have to spend a night in Vancouver before getting on a plane to Nanaimo the next morning. To say I was not a happy camper on those occasions would be a gross understatement.
I was looking forward to this Christmas. Because I am not working next semester I would be able to spend more time out west. Some weeks ago I booked my plane fight west. I did not arrange for a flight east in part because I was not sure how long I would be out west (ah the joys of being retired!). I had the thought that perhaps I would take the train back in part because I have never travel across the Canadian land mass in winter. I also assumed (hoped) that the train would be cheaper than the plane.
Last Friday I received an email from Air Canada telling me that my flight from Sudbury had been cancelled but that they had put me on the 6:00 AM flight to Toronto. There were a hundred reasons why that was not going to work including the fact that leaving at 5:00 AM for the airport would mean that I was not spending Christmas morning with my grand kids. So I called the number they gave me. After pushing a few buttons to get me into the right queue, a somewhat mechanical voice informed me that the wait for a representative would be somewhere between 26 and 45 minutes! Who has that much time to wait for someone to answer the call? It was clear that not only is Air Canada saving money by jamming more of us into their planes and by charging extra for every conceivable item, but they also are not hiring enough staff. One has to wonder if by making consumers wait for so long, if some folks just give up and didn't bother to complain.
But I had the time - so I waited. For the next 26 minutes I had to listen to extraordinary poor "music" interspersed with little ads telling me how wonderful Air Canada was. A few comments apologizing for the poor service would have been so much better. When my turn came, almost as soon as I started to explain the problem I was cut off - disconnected. I sat there, with the phone in my hand, unable to believe that a company that had spent the last 26 minutes bragging about their awards and is responsible for using all kinds of sophisticated technology, could not figure out how to make sure that calls don't get disconnected.
I re-dialed, went through the same process of pushing buttons when requested and was once again told that I would have to wait. This time it was not quite as long but I had to listen to the same terrible music and the same irritating bragging but from my perspective, clearly erroneous messages. Twenty minutes later a charming young lady came on the line, listened to my complaints about the music, the messages and the almost hour of waiting. She apologized for the fact that my flight had been switched. After some discussion (which included her going to talk to someone else) she agreed that Air Canada could and should refund my money.
The good news about all of this is that if I take the train out and fly back, I could potentially save approximately $400-500 by travelling a week later than I normally do. So perhaps I should thank Air Canada. But it was such poor service I don't think I will. They might inflict my comments on some poor sot waiting for their turn to complain.
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