...but who’s counting?
I’m beginning to wonder if I will ever have a good air travel experience again. I booked my flight for the upcoming IxDA conference, Interaction 08, back in November. I figured that would be the best way to make sure I got the flights I wanted at a good price. In convincing my company to send me to the conference, I made my trip as short as possible. I fly down Friday morning, arriving in plenty of time for the workshop I’m attending in the afternoon. The conference is over Sunday at 4:30. I booked a return flight that would leave at 6:50, allowing enough time to catch my plane and getting me home Sunday night so that I can make it to work Monday morning.
Leave it to the airlines, Delta in this case, to screw things up. Now that the conference is less than two weeks away, I’ve been notified that my itinerary has changed. They now have my departure at 5:40, and that’s the last flight to leave. If I had known this ahead of time, I probably would have stayed one more night. Now, I have to decide whether to miss the closing or risk missing my plane.
I’ve said it before. The air travel industry is ripe for a company to introduce a really good customer experience. I realize I don’t know anything about the intricacies of flight scheduling and the economics behind it, but I shouldn’t have to care about it. I can’t think of any other business I deal with that, once I’ve made an appointment, feels free to change it at any point without consulting me. What if your dentist, a week before the appointment you had scheduled a few months back, called to inform you that your appointment had been moved up an hour earlier?
“But I’m in a business meeting at that time.”
“That’s too bad. I guess you’ll just have to pay the cancellation fee.”
He wouldn’t be my dentist any longer. But what do you do when all of the dentists operate that way?