Friday, July 15, 2011

Follow up on travel woes.

The good news:
  • Sheraton did the right thing. Those who haven't can read my post on my wife and my weekend in Maine here. The summary is that my wife and I couldn't use our hotel reservation in Bangor airport since our plane was cancelled and we rebooked out of the Portland airport instead. Sheraton said that they couldn't refund our money but they could give us credit for a future stay. Since we plan on staying there again within the next few weeks it works out fine for us. Well done Sheraton.
  • Avis didn't ding us on returning the rental car in a different airport. They said no problem, no fee, just drop it off. Again well done, this time Avis.
  • Delta was able to book us on a flight that got us home at about the same time with difficulty. The bad part is the mystery weather report that caused them to cancel the plane in the first place (the day turned out to be what the TV weather folks said, "Sunny with a high of about 80") and that it took us a while on the phone to actually get it done.
  • It probably did cost us a little extra in gas money and a few bucks for tolls on I95 but all in all we did about as good as we could.
The bad news:
  • We stayed at a Comfort Inn. They are running a promotion where you stay 2 nights and get one free. My wife wanted to cash in the freebie but was told the hotel that she wanted the free night. They explained that we actually don't get a free night but got 8000 points. A free night in the hotel where we stayed was 24000 points. She tried a few others and no other hotel was less than 20000 points. They said that there were over 8000 hotels where we could get a free room nationwide. We were looking in Maine without success. Wonder where these hotels are?
  • My wife was flying today. Delta delayed her flight for four hours until they got a back up plane. Some people never learn.

3 comments:

Caroline said...

the points system is a nighmare...so many restrictions all the time, they make it really hard to use them...8000 hotels! yeah...I know where they are...on Saturn...somewhere

Heather said...

I will have to go back and read the whole story. It sounds like a nightmare.

Al's CL Reviews said...

Living in ATL, my only choice is Delta since I've flown on Airtran where the plane caught on fire, Airtran where the plane caught on fire (yes, I know I've said that twice), had an Airtran pilot refuse to fly the plane for safety reasons (got off that plane), and been told it sucks to be me after Airtran wouldn't bump someone so I could get on a plane to go to my grandmother's funeral.

So I'm stuck with Delta.