My experience with USA 3000 (vent)

[experiment626mom]

I booked what I thought was our return flight from Orlando back to Chicago. When I printed out the itinerary I noticed that the date was for May 24th not the 26th. I called USA 3000 immediately. (This happened within 2 minutes of making the reservations) I tell the girl that I made a mistake and that I needed to change the dates of my flights. She looks at my reservation and tells me that I am only flying from Orlando to St. Pete's. I tell her no, I have the reservation right in my hand and it says that I am flying from Orlando to Chicago. She starts yelling at me!!! Telling me that it's going to cost me and extra $40.00 per person to change the date and that I am only flying to St. Petersburg. When she finally stops, I tell her that I want to talk to her supervisor immediately. On comes a new person that asks me how I'm doing. Not too great with one of her people yelling at me!! So she tells me that she can change the date no problem. I also ask her where am I flying to. She tells me that I am flying to Orlando to St. Petersburg and then onto Chicago. I tell her that's not what I signed up for. Their website only shows from MCO to ORD. She tells me that it's a 50 minute stopover to pick up more passengers, because it's more cost effective and that we don't even get off the plane. I'm not too happy about the arrangements and tell her that I want to cancel the reservation. She tells me that's fine that I have until midnight the day I make the reservation to cancel without penalty, but that they can only give me flight vouchers. A quick conversation with my dh and we decide that we will just go ahead and do the quick layover and be done with it.

When I tell her that this is my first experience with USA 3000 and that I'm not too thrilled so far, she gets sugary sweet with me and tells me that "Out of bad all ways comes good." I would have been happy with an apology.

Oh and they only have one flight going into and out of Orlando everyday. I don't know why but that bothers me.

 

[kaytieeldr]

USA3000 is a budget airline. They actually don't even fly that route every day.
Just for fun, I checked out their website. I used May 19 as the outbound date and May 26 for the return.

The resulting page listed three flights down and three flights back BUT:
Each flight is a different date (5/17, 5/19 and 5/22 down; 5/24, 5/26 and 5/29 back);
Although there's a less expensive combination of flights, my dates of choice are highlighted in bright yellow AND preselected; and
Under the column labeled Stops, each return flight lists "1".

Also, directly below the reservation matrix/grid on the Select page, the airline states "ALL USA3000 AIRLINES TICKETS ARE NON-REFUNDABLE". This policy is restated on the Summary page as well as on the Contract of Carriage.

Now, I'm NOT excusing the Customer Service Rep for the way she treated you.

 

[CarolA]

This is a risk of charter airlines.... they can and will add and remove stopovers at will. So if they want to they can stop first at St. Pete and then again at someplace like Nashville on your way back to Chicago and you basically are STUCK! As long as they get you there on the same day they have no other obligations. (If they don't get you there, the ONLY obligation they have is to refund the money)