Iwantatravelagent

January 12th, 2018 by Jan

Rant alert!
I was hoping not to complain so much in 2018. But dang it I’ve been screaming at the inter-web for a few days now.

I’m looking at buying airline tickets on the inter-web, as we’d like to go visit my brother.

It seems to me, as soon as I start the search for travel, a good price comes up and I think —  before hitting the buy button, I should check in with others about dates, details, and doggy care.

Then, when I have those things covered, I go back to buy the tickets, and for some magical reason, the price for the same trip went up a couple of hundred dollars, and has changed to some crack of doom, departure time.

They fucking know, I’m interested.

When Ken was working as a draftsman, he had a saying for his customers. “Fast, cheap or accurate.” Pick two. This  really works.

If you want something fast and cheap — well, it won’t be accurate. If you want something accurate and cheap — plan on waiting. Fast and accurate — get your cheque book out.

The same goes for travel. Only, I put the three at accurate, convenient, and well, I can’t say cheap, but I do hope for as advertised.

Convenient is the real kicker for us living on the coast.

We cannot get an early morning flight out of YVR, because of the ferries. To leave early, we’d need to stay in a hotel the night before in Vancouver. I take that into consideration when looking at price. The same goes for coming home. The last boat won’t wait for us, if the plane is a bit late, so again… hotel. We know any trip we take is neither, fast, convenient or “cheap.”

Okay, we chose to live here, it’s the price we pay. So, I suck it up and go in once more to the web site to buy said ticket — jeepers. That same flight, just went up again and now has a eight hour layover in Tucumcari or Dallas!

Fuck you Travelocity. You know too much. You now know we want to go somewhere on certain dates and now, you think we should really pay for it. Each time I look the price goes up and up. What happen to the price that was offered the first time I looked, much less the one that was advertised?

So, the last few days I’ve been meaning to buy a stupid ticket and yet… each time I go look the price has risen, the times are worse, and the layovers longer.

Do you know that a flight from Vancouver to Vegas can take anywhere between 1.5 hours to 16.5 hours? That does not count getting to or from the airport, or the time waiting to get through security on the front end.

They advertise $195. round trip flights all over the inter-web, but the reality is closer to $450. and that does not count a hotel, taxi, or super late night arrival needed for the schedule.

I think the three choices we have now, have come down to two choices. Forget fast, cheap or convenient. We now need to pick   — go or don’t go.

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