Posted on 03/12/2015 4:57:11 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
A West Michigan man says he was forced to buy a new plane ticket home after the airline told him that he failed to show up for his original flight. He called 13 On Your Side looking for help after Southwest refused to refund his money.
"It's terrible. I can't believe the airline didn't know I was in that seat," says Bob Woudstra, of Cutlerville. Woudstra is upset that he was overlooked on his flight to Florida.
In February, he paid $616 for a roundtrip ticket from Grand Rapids to Ft Myers. On the 13th, he was dropped off at the airport with his carry-on bag. "I showed them my driver's license and boarding pass to get through security."
Bob made it to the Southwest gate and says he boarded the plane. "I handed my boarding pass to the lady and she ran it under the scanner and it didn't beep the first time. So she took it and did it again. I just made a comment that she had to do it twice."
Bob's flight went smoothly but about two hours later, he got an e-mail from Southwest, saying his flight was cancelled. "Well, I thought it was a spam mail because I just flew in on the flight."
The email was notifying Bob of Southwest's no show policy. "They say I wasn't on the plane, so they cancelled all my flights."
Bob had to buy a new return ticket to Grand Rapids for $456.
(Excerpt) Read more at wzzm13.com ...
Southwest, once a great airline, is turning into Delta.
But if this were a gov operation, this would be the norm.
why would he have to purchase something he already paid for? Lets just suppose he missed his original flight and got to his destination another way. Do you forfeit the return flight if you didn’t get on the flight outbound?
I generally fly Southwest because I always like the experience, it didn’t nickle and dime you to death, and was very efficient. However, on my last flight back in November, I noticed an overall drop in quality, from check-in through baggage retrieval. Not sure what’s happened within the airline, but it’s not good.
weird... i love Southwest Airlines... it is my favorite... they have always been accommodating, even when i have made mistakes...
He apparently had a round-trip ticket, and they canceled the entire itinerary (but keeping his money), while he was aboard the first flight. So he had to re-book and pay (again) for the second one-way ticket to get home.
This happened to me one time on Delta. They insisted that I had not taken the outbound segment of my ticket. I got on the phone with customer service and explained they had an error, and challenged them to explain how exactly I happened to be across the country if I had not taken the flight. They corrected the error and I got on my return.
I did not at any time feel the need to call the press.
The next step before leaving the gate is the count performed by the flight attendants. That always had to be reconciled between the flight attendants and the gate agent at my airline before the flight could be ‘closed-out’. A head count would have shown a discrepancy although tracking who is on board and who isn’t is made more difficult by Southwest’s practice of not assigning seats.
My preferred solution would be to have the passenger refunded for all money he had to expend on this trip and a written apology from the gate agent for the hassle.
he must have snuck past the boarding attendants and didn’t get his ticket scanned. His fault.
I don’t think it was the gate agent’s fault. She waved him through.
The clerk who refused to honor the second portion of his ticket and refused explanation was the jerk.
good question... i missed a flight, my fault... when i got to the gate too late, they immediately put me on the next flight, which was a few minutes later... once when i was in an unfamiliar airport, running late, i was frantic when i found out my gate was waaaayyyy on the other side of the airport... security told me not to worry... that Southwest Airlines is good about such things and would put me on the next flight... this was about a year ago... i have other examples of how accommodating Southwest Airlines is...
I would have had my lawyer purchase the new ticket....
There was no second portion of his ticket. It had been cancelled. Electronic ticketing has advantages and drawbacks and this is one of those drawbacks. However, if the gentleman had email on his cell, he would have received the notification upon landing and could have tried to resolve the issue before leaving the airport in Florida or before trying to make the return flight. However, the gate agent, allowed him on when there was a problem scanning his boarding pass and she/he assumed the scan was successful and he/she was the weak point in the process.
Right, but when he attempted to correct the situation, he was denied satisfaction.
Customer service helps.
He ought to have kept his copy of the boarding pass as evidence that he indeed took the original flight.
-— But if this were a gov operation, this would be the norm. -—
That’s worth remembering
The trains in Boston are still not running on time Some lines are running at 50%
On my line, no express trains are running, and won’t be running until 4/1 So for two months, I’ve lost one hour per day, or AT LEAST 40 hours of time Many days were much worse
The MBTA announced that they will give commuter rail passengers a 15% discount on the May monthly pass
How’s that for valuing customers?
But there are plenty of apologists for the MBTA, saying that they need the money to make repairs
They’d crucify a company that did the same thing
Southwest keeps it since there are no assigned seats.
There is a trick that frequent flyers used to do all the time called "hidden destination" cities. Say you wanted a one way ticket from Ft. Meyers to Grand Rapids. The price is $549. But if you bought a round trip ticket from Grand Rapids to Ft. Meyers and back again, the entire round trip ticket was $249. Airlines do this sort of pricing all the time.
So you buy the round trip ticket, but only actually use the return portion. Airlines have caught on and have started cancelling round trip tickets if you don't show up for the first leg.
There's another variation of this trick where a flight from NY to say Chicago is $500, but a flight from NY to LA, with a stopover in Chicago, is $250. You buy the NY to LA ticket, don't check any bags, and just get off in Chicago.
I was at a Choice Hotel two nights ago. I mentioned to the girl at the counter that the toilet needed a new valve because it kept refilling overnight and that the shower drain was just a bit slow and probably due for a cleanout.
She gave me a 10% discount, that I didn’t ask for and by the time I got back to my room, there was already a maintenance guy checking it out.
Private enterprise vs. government
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