After over 6 hours of being on the phone with Expedia because my return flight was cancelled, no reason, numerous dropped calls, speaking with representatives about the situation, them “checking” them out, then having to get with the help desk (supervisor), more dropped calls, no call backs, two dropped calls with transfers to supervisors, I finally called United, but they said I had to go through the booking office.

I just called the last two times and said I wanted to speak to a supervisor. One was dropped, the last time, the woman wasn’t really happy with me for not giving the details to her subordinate. And I explained why–at that point, I had been on the phone, and off, and on, and off, and on for five hours. I only counted the time I was on. 5 hours!

Like the characters in my books, I’m persistent. Dogged. Tenacious, Yet I was always polite, exasperated at the last because I didn’t think I’d ever get it resolved, but I waited a couple of hours before I tried the last time, but I’ve worked in customer relation type of fields all my life. I know what it’s like to deal with the public. And I didn’t want anyone feeling I was mad at them. Everyone was super nice. And they were trying.

But no results. No returned calls, which meant repeating myself over and over again as if no one had heard the story and everyone had to do all the checking over and over again. And get the supervisor. Over and over again.

So I told the supervisor what one of the people told me, and she had to check into it herself. She took my phone number, which everyone did, but no one called back. While I spent over an hour with her, the call was dropped. I started to do some things, hoping she would call me back, and she finally did. So after over 6 hours of being on the phone, she said the $81 extra dollars I paid over and above the $368 credit I had, hadn’t gone through. I had to pay an extra $141 for some reason, but it would be refunded. So that was an additional $222 for a flight that cost $291. So much for having a credit, right???

I really hope the refund goes through because on my credit card, it showed I was charged twice for $221, which I told her and which she assured me, the one would “drop off,” which can take up to 5 days, because in no way do I want to call them back. And my tickets? Reinstated.

Now, when I’ve had a problem with flights before, I arrive at the airport and voila, still have a problem. Surely not this time. Oh, and she gave me a voucher for $200 for a hotel. Great. IF I didn’t have to book hotels through the conference sites. If it had been for airfare, great! Even so, I looked for my voucher on my site. No. Voucher. Maybe I don’t know where to look. Maybe if I call them…..

Air travel has been a nightmare for me on more flights that not. So I think I need to write an anthology of true airline misadventures and give them HEAs.