Modern Modes of Transportation are Only Cool When They Actually Work, or Why I Should Have Never Left Ohio in the First Place

Filed under living in new york sucks so hard

I bought a plane ticket to Ohio for two weeks’ worth of Christmas presents, Christmas parties, and Christmas-themed desserts at chain restaurants several weeks ago for $291.90. The night before the snowstorm hit, Delta canceled my flight but politely allowed me to reschedule myself for the next day. I was slightly disappointed in the delay but used the night to make a lot of unnecessary noise in Kamran’s apartment while he studied for his final exams.

Three hours before my flight on Sunday, I packed the last of my things, put on really comfortable underwear for the flight, and began saying goodbye to Kamran. Which mostly involved lots of “I don’t want to go!”s and “Let’s get back into bed and not leave for two weeks!”s. I WAS KIDDING. But moments before I left, I happened to check my flight status to see if there was any residual delay from the day before and found that it had been canceled.

Even though the streets and the runway had been cleared for 18 hours.

The Delta website wouldn’t let me reschedule again, so I called customer service, and after listening to twenty minutes of “White Christmas” and other ironic holiday hold tunes, I found that the earliest flight they would fit me on was on DECEMBER 25TH.

I called Orbitz, who I had used to buy the flight, and after twenty more minutes, the slightly-more-helpful customer service rep said I was approved for an automatic refund if I wanted to cancel the flight and start over with another airline. She said her computer wasn’t showing flights available until the 23rd, but the Orbitz website was listing flights on the 21st, so I gave her the exact flight numbers I wanted to book. She acted like this was all fine and dandy but then said, “Now, you know it’s a $25 fee to book over the phone, right?” EXCUSE ME? No.

So I selected my flights and tried signing into the site with my account to pay for them, but it said customer service was already logged in, which meant I had to manually enter my payment information. By the time I did that, my flight was gone. I chose another one and tried the same thing, but it was gone again. And again. Finally, though, I managed to snag a flight at 3:25 p.m. today, three days later than I was supposed to be home, for $452.

The great part is that when my first flight was rescheduled, my best friend, Tracey, said she was going to drive the ten hours from Ohio to pick me up, and we laughed. Turns out it would’ve been way faster. Hahahahahaha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha.

8 Comments

  1. Have a fantastically wonderful Christmas in Ohio.

    You’ve earned it.

  2. Cristy says:

    Someday we’ll have something that doesn’t depend on the weather. Have a good trip!

  3. Tessa says:

    And the final blow, of course, is that this is a dramatic and interesting story about transportation — but not the correct kind of transportation to earn you moneyzz at the Examiner site.

    Hope your holidays improve.

  4. dude, i would have DRIVEN you to ohio for $200 bucks. hahaha!

    hope you have a swell christmas and that santa brings you everything you want and/or don’t need!!!

  5. Mike Lowrey says:

    For 400 bucks I would have flown to Newark, rented a car, drove you to Ohio and then totally made out with all of the single cute girls in your town.

  6. Jack says:

    Ha! That’s what you get for ordering lunch on Thursday instead of Friday. What goes around comes around.

  7. Kirsten says:

    Wow airlines suck. My best friend is still stuck in New York right now waiting to come home.

    Hope you enjoy your Christmas in Ohio!

  8. Christina says:

    I had a similar experience trying to get from Tokyo to New Jersey. After spending unnecessary days in Atlanta with jetlagged kids, only to arrive in NJ just in time to have 14 people show up to spend Christmas in our summer house, we found out that it wAs ONLY DELTA that wouldn’t fly into Philly. All the other airlines were fine.

    We both booked the wrong airline.