February 7, 2007
Possibly worse travel day of my life
I will classify this blog under low-light for Dublin airport but will also cross link it as a low-light of Ryanair also.
Sunday 3rd December 2006 was a travel experience that I will not forget in a long time and gave me some food for thought as to the possible problems when trying to marry the old way of doing things and the new way of doing things with always being connected, ubiquitous, buying on line, ...
I spent the entire day starting with a drive from home to Dublin airport in huge winds and well into the evening Sunday at Dublin airport where due to the extremely averse weather conditions, most of the flights into and out of Dublin were eventually cancelled. Unfortunately, in an attempt to do this in a timed and/or staged fashion to assist their staff in baggage and at the ticket desks, Ryanair, up to the boarding time and even one hour after my flight boarding time were still claiming that the Brussels flight was going to depart. Not so.
Therefore, by the time we got our bags returned, which took another hour from the time they informed us the flight was cancelled, there were thousands (yes thousands) of people with all their luggage in tow queuing up trying to change their tickets back in the departures area.
Aer Rianta Airport and/or Ryanair staff (it was hard to tell who was who) were walking through the throngs of people giving very mixed advice: For example,
1. one saying to go off and and re-book on-line and there were a significant number of people standing around trying to balance their laptops on their arms and watch their bags/children etc, (have you noticed that the DAA has ripped out most of the seats on the departures level of the airport);
2. one person saying if you booked a new ticket on line for a more expensive flight, you wouldn't get a refund to that full amount unless you waited for the next morning when their specific refund/change web site was available at 9am, at which time you would get a full refund or change; In other words, before 9am the following morning, they would only refund you the amount of your current ticket and if the new one purchased was more expensive (more than likely), you were caught with the difference and post 9am, they would allow you to trade in your ticket for a new one, if available. but the catch 22 was that the tickets would be gone already if you waited that long.
3. one person then saying NOT to book on line as there could be a double booking situation as they were changing tickets so fast for passengers at the ticket desk and their database wasn't being changed quick enough and the people on the queue would have priority in this scenario,
4. one saying most flights for 4th were already full and those more flexible should leave and re-book on line after 9am the following morning.
Eventually, I went with advice number 4 but first went off site to a local hotel where I knew they had wifi and seats were I could sit in some comfort and tried to see my options from there. Once in the hotel, the ryanair web site said that no changes could be made on line until 9am the following morning and when I phoned them, their office had already closed at 5pm. So there was absolutely no way to make any changes again that night for the 6.50 flight Monday morning to Brussels without going back out to the airport . Therefore, I decided to go home and at 9.10am Monday morning, their refund/change site did become available (feel sorry for the staff who had to work overnight on this and impressed they were only 10 minutes over on the deadline) and I applied for a full refund as all other flights were fully booked for next two days so I would have missed my project review.
Interestingly, their refund/change site didn't offer you an option to refund only the cancelled leg of your journey, which was an option i had considered since there was an aerlingus option available the next day albeit very expensive. It was an all or nothing thing, either full refund or change of one or more of the legs of your journey. You could either get a full refund on a single or return ticket depending on the kind of ticket you had OR change one or both of the legs. In other words, they would not allow you to get a refund on the cancelled Sunday leg (in my case this was the most expensive part of the return ticket) and still use the return Tuesday leg. This, of course, was to prevent you from booking with another airline the following morning for the outward leg only ;-( and still get the refund from them, which was precisely what I was attempting to do ;-) .
First time and hopefully the last time I have such an experience....the good news was our project review went well without me and I eventually got a full refund from both Aer arann and Ryanair, albeit in the middle of January 2007!
Posted by jclarke at 5:54 PM
| Comments (2)
| TrackBack
|
